Groceries, clothing, Christmas presents, holidays, flowers - online shopping has become part and parcel of our everyday lives. But when it comes to shopping for something more personal, like jewellery or even underwear, we can be a little more tentative.

When buying jewellery online - especially something as important as a wedding band - you’ll want to make sure you have a few things covered:

1. Size and Fit
2. Colour and Finish
3. Payment and Delivery

Whether it’s a minimalist wedding band or a ring made from ethical gold, when it comes to the process of buying online, Good Gold makes it easy to make sure you’re getting everything right for your big day.

Our ring sizer makes it simple to get a perfect fit.

Our Good Gold wedding ring sizer is the easiest way to ensure you’re ordering the right size online, without trying on before you buy. Wondering how to measure your ring size at home? Made from recycled eskaboard kraft cardboard, our ring sizer fits into a standard sized envelope. You don’t need to worry about printable ring charts. Just order one from our website and we’ll send it to you within a few working days for you to try on at home. We don’t bother with international sizing conversions, just order your ring in the size that corresponds to your correct fit on your ring sizer and we’ll take care of the rest.

You can see exactly what the metal finish and polish looks like.

We show you our wedding bands on the hand. This will give you a good idea of the thickness of the band and the tone of each metal option, whether you’re deciding between rose gold, white gold or yellow gold.

We give you free delivery and free returns.

After buying your rings online, it needs to be easy to get alterations done to your ring, or to send it back if for some reason you’re not fully happy with it. So we offer free delivery and free returns. If you need the size of your ring adjusted, we also give you your first resize free. It’s as simple as that.

Still have questions?

Our team are here to help answer any queries you may have about buying a wedding ring online. Get in touch with our team to find out more about choosing a ring for your special day.

There are slight variations in the colour, depending on the carat of gold used. The photos below show how the three metals compare. You can read more about the ethical gold we use to make our wedding bands here.

Your budget is an important factor. How important to you is the intrinsic value of your ring? The higher the carat, the more pure gold in your ring thus the higher value it holds.

The first thing you need to know is that no matter what metal your ring is made from, the structure of the ring is guaranteed for life. When we talk about durability, we mean the surface dings and scratches that your ring may encounter as you go through life wearing it. The surface of your ring can always be brought back to its original finish (every ring comes with a care kit), but it can be annoying if you don’t want to maintain your ring. Generally, the higher the carat, the harder the metal.

By itself, gold is too soft for everyday wear. So we alloy it with other metals. The term carat is a measure of purity. 24 carat is pure gold.

9 carat is 9 parts gold and 15 parts other metals - or around 1/3rd gold.

14 carat is 14 parts gold and 10 parts other metals - or around 5/8ths gold.

18 carat is 18 parts gold and 6 parts other metals - or 3/4 gold.

In general, the higher the carat, the harder and heavier it is.

In general, the higher the carat, the less chance of a reaction. Most often, people are sensitive to either nickel or copper. None of our rings contain nickel, but our yellow and rose gold rings do contain copper (the higher the carat, the less copper). If you end up with a ring that irritates your skin, we'll work with you to find a suitable alternative.

I remember the first time I saw photos from John and Yoko's bed-in. Raised by hippies, this seemed like the most romantic thing ever. I think this would be a super sweet ritual on your original wedding date. Fresh sheets, cozy (or saucy) pajamas, delicious food, drinks in fancy glasses, lots of candles. 

Stay in bed all day. Do a boudoir photoshoot. One of my most favourite memories from when Ash and I got married was laying in bed and writing our wedding vows together. Read each other poems. Binge watch the movies that brought you together (for us, Say Anything pretty much sealed our deal). Play each other your favourite songs.

Get super duper dressed up and break out your best plates and have a fancy ass picnic in your back yard! Take your rug outside and make delicious cocktails. Take your time setting up beautiful photos of each other.

Ask each other the 36 questions to fall in love from the infamous New York Times article. Eat delicious desserts. Bring out more and more blankets and pillows as it gets darker and colder. Maybe even sleep outside! You can definitely make out outside, that's super fun.

Go for a walk! We all need some damn fresh air. Tell each other the story of how you met. Take your wedding rings along and do a little exchange when no one's looking. Come up with your plan of what you'll do if you win the lottery (very important pre-marriage discussion).

Go home and celebrate with pizza and beer and donuts, I mean you did exercise, you earned it! Take a long shower together and get in bed. Have a little cry about it all, it's pretty sad.

To understand the good, first we need to understand the bad. Traditional hard rock mining is a nasty business. Imagine a giant pit in the earth 10 stories deep with huge earth-movers dust and a landscape that is altered forever. Crushed rock is mixed with a slurry of cyanide or mercury to extract the gold. To get enough gold for 1 wedding ring 10-20 tonnes of mining waste can be created.

These mines are often located on land taken from indigenous communities who are then forced to work in the mines in dangerous conditions. The toxic slurry left behind is held in great reservoirs that pollute groundwater and hold the potential for extreme environmental disasters. This is all bad news! But, it doesn’t have to be this way.

From what we’ve found, there are three options jewellers have to make an ethical wedding ring. None of them are 100% perfect, but all of them are better than traditionally mined metal.

Because gold has such a high intrinsic value, it rarely just gets thrown away. Many precious metal suppliers buy old gold jewellery from people that they refine and turn into the stock metal that jewellers use to make new jewellery.

Why it’s good: it puts a dent in the demand for newly-mined gold.

Why it’s bad: unfortunately, the original gold was most likely mined in a traditional way. Because so many jewellers rely on this as an ethical option, it takes momentum and motivation away from making bigger changes to the whole mining industry. It’s kind of an easy out that doesn’t address the bigger issue.

Many, many jewellers and advocates have worked really, really hard to develop a process to certify gold mines under the fairtrade umbrella.

Why It’s Good: These mines adhere to environmental controls and support small-scale artisanal mines so that communities are looked-after and workers are paid in a fair way. They support gender equality and are audited by a 3rd party organisation.

Why it’s Bad: It’s not really. In many cases these are still traditional hard-rock mines that use mercury and cyanide, however, there are strict rules around how these can be used, workers are protected, environmental damage is mitigated and ecosystems are restored. Overall Fairtrade Gold is a fantastic choice, it really is. We just decided we were more comfortable using local gold from mines we could visit.

Alluvial gold mining is the most simple form of mining. Basically, it’s separating the gold from the sand and stones it mixes with as it washes out of the hills. Water and time does the hard work of getting the gold out of the rock - people just need to do the last bit. This can take many different forms, from a single person panning in a river to black sand beach collecting to bigger operations using diggers and diesel.

Why It’s Good: what makes it different from traditional hard rock mining is that the gold is already separated from the rock so giant pits aren’t created and chemicals like cyanide aren’t used. A lot of alluvial gold is collected from areas that have been mined in the past and can have a beneficial impact on these environments.

The gold we use is (almost*) all from New Zealand alluvial sources and processed in this country so we know that all the workers are protected by New Zealand’s very strong labour laws and work in safe conditions. *We do reuse a little (about 2%) recycled gold from old jewellery and workshop scraps but we think this is OK - no one’s 100% pure.

b) Why it’s Bad: like all mining, it has an impact on the environment. In bigger alluvial operations, there is large machinery involved and some types of alluvial mining use mercury as part of the process. However, in New Zealand there are very strict environmental management controls, resource consent processes and provisions to provide environmental restoration. As well as no mining in National Parks.

Your gold ring isn’t just made from gold. It takes a little copper and silver to make an alloy strong enough to last a lifetime. Hopefully longer. Our only option for these is to use recycled sources. Unfortunately, we’re still working on this one...

We want to make the world’s most ethical wedding ring and that involves a lot more than just the materials we use. Sustainable, ethical, eco-friendly, these buzzwords can be somewhat hard to define and easily co-opted, so we put a lot of thought and effort into what they really mean to us as a business. We decided that we want to our business to be sustainable in an environmental sense, but also on a personal level-for both us and the people who work for us.

So, our sustainability criteria are threefold - our physical and environmental management, the well-being and happiness of everyone we work with (along the whole supply chain) and running our business in a way that makes us feel challenged, excited and like we’re doing some good in the world.

OFFICE

We put thought into processes both big and small to help reduce our environmental footprint in our office and workshop. We’re by no means perfect, but we really do try our hardest.

We drive an electric car from our home office to our workshop in town. All of our packaging is made from recycled material that can be reused or recycled and printed with eco-friendly inks. We’ve invested a lot of time into making sure we never send people bits of paper that ultimately just get thrown away.

We try to be as paperless as possible internally (for instance, we don’t automatically include a printed invoice inside each package), but when we do have to print something, we print it reduced by 50% and use both sides of the paper. We’ve never bought bubble wrap, we always save and reuse other people’s packaging.

WORKSHOP

We use citric acid as our pickling solution (the solution we use for removing oxidised surfaces and flux from our jewellery after soldering) so we don’t have to dump nasty chemicals down the drain. Our jewellers make their own sanding sticks instead of buying readymade throw away ones. Every bit of dust and filings gets swept up and sent back to our metal supplier to be reused. We reuse tape if it’s still sticky.

PEOPLE

We pay everyone that works for us above the living wage (we are a certified living wage employer). We work hard to make our physical surroundings comfortable and inspiring. We live in New Zealand, so all workers get at least four weeks of paid holidays every year, sick leave and 26 weeks parental leave. We work really hard to listen to everyone that works for us so that they know they are part of the shaping of our decisions. We throw kick ass holiday parties.

BUSINESS

If we can’t feel really good about doing this business, we have no business doing it. It's important to the Good Gold team that we’re not taking advantage of anyone, aren't hurting anybody, and are providing a really lasting reminder of people’s happiest day. That’s awesome! But, our work is not done. We want to give other people this opportunity too and use our platform to raise awareness (and money) for causes that we think can make real change. We’re in the process of becoming a B-Corp which has given us so much inspiration for ways we can improve.