This post is sponsored by my new pals at Rivet & Sway. I am so thrilled to have the chance to tell y’all about them in this second installment of my two-part blog post. I love this company’s concept, their products and their personal enthusiasm for what they’re doing. I think that many of y’all will feel the same way when you get to know them.
Thanks Rivet & Sway!
And don’t forget that between now and June 30th, 2013, Rivet & Sway is offering Big Good Thing readers $25 off their first purchase of any pair of glasses in their collection. Just enter the discount code SUPER-MOM when you order.
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Last week, I told y’all about Rivet & Sway, a nifty, start-up company offering all of us bespectacled girls a smart, new option for choosing and buying what is for many of us our most important personal style accessory. At the end of that post, I mentioned that I had selected three possible frames for myself from Rivet and Sway using their Home Try-On service, and that in a follow-up post, I’d be asking blog readers to help me make my final selection from among the three finalists.
So here we go!
But first, a bit of background on why I am currently in the market for new spex…
As I’ve mentioned on my blog many times, I have really awful eyesight, and that’s been the case since I was in early elementary school. I started wearing glasses all the time when I was eight years old, and at this point, my glasses are just part of who I am. They never leave my face except when I am asleep, and they are the first thing I reach for when I open my woefully inadequate eyeballs each morning.
I generally try to have at least three pairs of glasses made to my prescription on hand at all times: two different frames for all-the-time wear (allowing me to switch up depending on what I’m wearing/doing that day, and also in case I break one pair), plus a pair of Rx sunglasses. Currently, I have only one pair of everyday eyeglasses, and I kind of hate the prescription shades I have these days. I felt rushed to pick the frames out at the mall eyeglasses store, so I went with whatever pair the sales lady said qualified for the BOGO sale.
So I need to get a second pair of daily-wear glasses, and I’d love to replace the ugly shades. I’ve known this for a while now, but I’ve put off acquiring either until after my upcoming cataract surgery, which will correct the “congenital polar cataracts” that I have in both eyes, a diagnosis that came after 6-12 months of sudden, major deterioration of my already pretty terrible eyesight. I was supposed to have the cataracts removed in March, but I had to push the dates back. I am now scheduled to have eyeball #1 fixed on June 14, followed by eyeball #2 on June 28. My eye surgeon says that while my vision will be vastly improved (yay!) following the surgeries, he doesn’t believe I will ever be able to go without glasses. While many patients would be very disappointed to hear this, I’m not one of them. I’d feel totally weird and off-kilter without glasses, plus Jon says he loves the fact that I wear glasses and would hate it if I ever ditched them.
So I am in the market for new glasses, which I will order with my new, improved lens prescription following my surgeries. (I’ll also have to have new lenses made for the pair of everyday glasses I am wearing now).
Enter Rivet & Sway… + you.
Because I was already in the market for that second pair of glasses, it was very fortuitous timing when the nice folks at Rivet & Sway reached out to me a few weeks ago and asked whether I’d like to check them out. I immediately said yes because as someone who does probably 90% of her retail shopping online, I’ve always wished that some company would figure out how to make it practical and convenient to choose and buy glasses that way. After I visited RivetandSway.com for the first time, I realized that someone finally had figured this out (sort of like how Zappos was the first company to figure out how to make online shoe-shopping as easy or easier than going to an actual shoe store.)
I found the experience of browsing for and then selecting my three Home Try-On frames from Rivet & Sway not only easy, but actually fun. I can safely say that I have never had anything I would even remotely describe as “fun” shopping for new glasses.
Also, somewhat amazingly, since I’ve worn glasses my whole life and you’d think I would already know this stuff, I learned some really useful guidelines from the Rivet & Sway online style guide to help me choose the right frames based on my lifestyle + my facial shape (apple shaped).
After taking in all this good advice, I browsed the entire Rivet & Sway collection, narrowed my choices by color and shape, and then selected the three frames I wanted to try at home. Forty eight hours later, they arrived on my doorstep in a very pretty yet sturdy box, containing each pair of frames in its own equally pretty,single-frame-sized box.
Over the next few days, I was able to try each pair of frames on at my leisure, and I modeled all three options for friends and family, getting their feedback on which pair I should go with, post-eye surgery.
And now, I’d like to get y’all’s input on which pair I should get. I know which frames I like best, but I’m not going to tell you until after you tell me what you think.
So here goes…. And for the record, I think that I look exceedingly awkward in these snapshots; I am generally not very comfortable posing for pix. I am perfectly happy to be on TV, online video or radio, but there’s just something about sitting still and posing. But hey, at least the frames look good, right ?!
Okay, here’s option number one. These are red, just like my hair is at the moment (but trust me, that will change on a whim. I love playing around with hair color). This pair looks quite a bit like the red frames I was sporting around the time Jon and I got married, only I have now learned that those frames were way too small to flatter my round face and small eyes. These from Rivet & Sway have that red color I liked, but are a much better fit for my features, I think. But forget my opinion on this pair; what’s yours?
And here’s a pair that’s fairly similar to option number one in shape, but these are darker and I think they make me look more serious, perhaps. These could maybe be my power-pair of glasses – the gravitas-enhancing pair that I don for those important meetings at work. What do you think?
And finally, here’s option number three. These are a big departure for me, both in color and frame materials. They’re made of a type of very lightweight but sturdy metal, and as you can see…they’re bright blue – sort of an electric-ey teal color. These strike me as pretty and fun. How about you?
Okay, time for y’all to vote; which of these three frames should I get as my second, daily-wear pair of glasses? And why? Again, I know what my vote is, but I want your objective opinion. After one week of taking in your feedback in the comments below, I will make my decision. If consensus is overwhelmingly in favor (or opposed to) one pair over the other two, that’s advice I plan to take.
So what do you think? I can’t wait to find out.
Finally, I want to mention that as with all my shopping, I try to buy locally on a regular basis whenever possible. For that reason, while I am really excited to discover Rivet & Sway, and will be a regular customer of theirs for years to come, I will also continue to give my business to our small, local, family-owned optical shop. Between my glasses, Jon’s glasses, and the ones C is about to get (more on that later ), we have plenty of patronage to spread around, and as a consumer, I like the idea of having two great options for my shopping.
