I find the whole practice of getting a loved one a very expensive diamond ring so that she might say yes to marrying you is a complete joke. I know there are some women who will probably disagree with me, but I find it equivalent to buying someone’s love. Would you have told your current husband ‘no’ if he proposed to you and didn’t have a ring? If you would have said ‘no’ for that reason… then that’s wrong.
I was talking to a friend about it today because he is getting married and spent like $3000 (2+ months salary) and I just think it’s ridiculous. He could have bought an artificial 1 carat for about $200. I know it’s the ‘thought’ that counts and that apparently our society measure love by how much money you are willing to blow on someone. We live in that sort of materialistic world… and I hate it. Really.
Howabout this… instead of spending all that money on a piece of jewelry… I pay rent for us for a few months, or we use this towards the honeymoon, or a future vacation. Instead of spending all this money and potentially going into debt so we both have to work so often that we rarely even get to see each other!
The sad thing is how prevalent this tradition is all over the world now. No matter where I go some woman is going to expect me to give her a ring when I propose. STUPID!
So be honest… would you have said ‘no’ with no ring?
Preferences vary. When all my friends and I were getting married, I don’t think any of us were proposed to with a real diamond ring. The idea was that if you were going to have a fancy engagement ring (which wasn’t a given), you should pick it out yourself. One friend’s guy proposed with a ring from Target. Later on she did get an actual diamond, largely because he wanted to do it that way. She and another friend of mine are the only ones I can think of who ended up with actual diamonds.
My husband proposed unexpectedly and so used a ring of his own, which I wore until we went and got one that would fit me. I don’t like diamonds, and we were poor students, so we thought it would be really cool to get a $10 ring from the street stands on Telegraph (we lived in Berkeley), but when we looked they were all hideous. We ended up with a white gold braid for ~$100. Our wedding rings didn’t cost much more.
My advice is, don’t assume that all women are greedy gold-diggers after your money, and probably when you meet a girl who is right for you, it will turn out that she’s a reasonable human being who may or may not have expectations about how much you will spend on her. In either case, I’m sure it can be discussed rationally.
Friends of mine were getting married right out of high school, with little money. In a small town, with 2 main jewelry stores, located on the main street. They walked back and forth between them, comparing rings, and a bit dismayed that all the rings were beyond their planned price. They stopped on the sidewalk, about halfway between the jewelry stores, to talk about it. Then she, looking through the window into a real estate company, remarked: “for the price of those rings, we could make the down payment on this farm that is for sale”. He said “if you’d rather have a farm…” So she got a plain, cheap ring, and after their wedding they moved onto their farm.
For their 10th Anniversary, her husband suggested that they could now afford to get her a nice diamond ring. She said: “that’d be real nice … or … we could rebuild my horse barn with that money…” So at their Anniversary, we all toured the rebuilt barn, and she wore the same plain ring.
Correction: Commercial interests in our society are strongly encouraging the notion that love is somehow measured by how much money you are willing to blow on someone.
There is absolutely no reason that you personally have to subscribe to that notion or marry somebody who does. A large number of people don’t.
Also, I think you’re conflating the custom of wearing an engagement ring per se with the commercial marketing ploy of expecting engagement rings to be very expensive. You can get a woman a very nice engagement ring without spending huge amounts of money on it.
When this thread gets moved out of GQ to its ultimate home in IMHO or wherever, you’ll probably collect a lot of different opinions about personal preferences for expensive vs. inexpensive engagement rings, but I think you’ll find that almost everyone agrees that no, engagement rings don’t need to be expensive. Don’t believe everything you read in the DeBeers ads.
This sounds like an IMHO thread and not GQ. Responding as a GQ question, some women would say no because they feel the expense of the ring is a symbol of the dedication of the fiance-to-be. A sort of, “How do I know he really means it?” sort of thing. Additionally, some women do like feeling like they’re worth spoiling, and the more money spent in the ring, the more deservedly spoiled they are.
Responding to this as an IMHO thread–no, I would not have said “no.” The ring is a fairly unimportant token as far as I’m concerned. The ring is symbolic to me and has a tremendous amount of sentimental value as such, but it could be worth $100 or $10,000, and the emotional impact and value wouldn’t change. I’m not really a jewelry kind of girl, anyway; I’m not comfortable wearing anything so small worth so much (that, and I’d rather spend the money on other things). If my now-hubby had proposed sans ring, I absolutely would have said yes. It would have been odd in the off-tradition sort of way, but it would not have changed my response.
I proposed to my wife with an inexpensive ring with a cheap gem. After she said yes, we went shopping for a “real” engagement ring with a diamond. It’s not something she demanded; I wanted to give it to her. I just wanted to make sure I got something she liked. I still got something I could easily afford.
My husband proposed without a ring - he figured (and was right) that I would know what I wanted, and he had no idea what I wanted. So, he got down on one knee and held my hand, then the next day we went shopping.
Incidently - we ended up spending a bit less than one month’s sallary, and I paid for half of it, since I had already set aside some money for “wedding expenses” (We’d already started pre-marriage counceling, and narrowed things down to three or four dates. It’s not like it was a surprise.)
Both times I’ve been married we didn’t talk about rings until after my intendeds said yes. Actually, I don’t think I know anyone who got the ring first and then proposed.
I think it’s funny that you seem to think it’s preferable to spend $3000 “towards” a honeymoon or vacation, but it’s a waste of money to spend the same amount on an engagement ring, which is a permanent item of sentimental value that a woman will wear every day for the rest of her life.
As others have said, it’s possible to buy a very nice engagement ring for much less than $3000. Also, there are women who wouldn’t want an engagement ring at all.
My husband and I each wear a plain gold band, and I don’t have an engagement ring. Good thing, probably; I inadvertently flushed my original wedding ring down the toilet within the first couple of weeks that we were married. A few years later, my husband lost his original band while sorting through a bunch of boxes. Since his ring wasn’t at the bottom of Lake Michigan, he did eventually recover it (maybe a year or two later), but he had already bought a replacement. In the mean time, I had outgrown my replacement, so I took to wearing his original ring. My replacement ring is still sitting on the dresser. We always say that we need to keep it around in case we decide to have a polygamous union.
Also, when my grandparents got married in the early 40’s, my grandfather offered my grandmother the choice between a wedding ring or a set of flatware. She chose the flatware.
He hadn’t bought a ring before proposing, and I said yes.
As part of planning the wedding, we picked out inexpensive tungsten carbide bands that we liked. For my birthday, before the wedding, he surprised me with an additional inexpensive titanium ring with gems that he remembered me remarking on, in lieu of an official engagement ring.
I certainly wouldn’t make a life-altering decision based on jewelry.
My first engagement, we went shopping for rings together before becoming official. I wouldn’t even look at diamonds. He got a very nice setting with my birthstone for just a few hundred. It was done by a high quality jeweler, so it was a beautiful piece without putting him in debt.
My second engagement, he proposed unexpectedly and without a ring. He never ended up buying me one at all. At the time I was like “diamonds are bad. DeBeers is evil. I don’t need a rock to show me love,” and all that stuff. I did marry him. And I later divorced him. While I am not very materialistic and don’t really expect someone to prove his love for me, I realized that his cheapness with me wasn’t just frugality but a real big red flag about how little he cared. After I left, I saw clearly for the first time, how he’d spend tons of money on himself and yet couldn’t be bothered for me. And it wasn’t like he was nice to me in other ways that don’t have monetary value, like foot rubs on a bad day or even a hug.
So I didn’t say no, but if I ever get serious again, after being burned badly twice, I’d need some sort of reassurance that I was worth something to him. A big honking diamond doesn’t mean guy #3 would be any better than #1 or #2, but at least I’d have something to sell if he ended up as bad as them. I realized that I was selling myself short and being a doormat.
My wife and I agreed that we wanted a ring, but not to spend a fortune on it. As I recall, we spent about $700, 25 years ago. Probably a week and a half’s salary at the time. Much more reasonable than two freakin’ months.
I used to work in the jewelry business, and I can tell you that about 95% of women pick out their own rings, when they are purchased retail.
On the few occasions that fellows bought the ring first, the return rate was very high, as the new fiancees arrived to exchange the rings for whatever it was they had in mind in the first place. Pregnant fiancees (and there are LOTS of them, no joke) were more apt to just return the diamond, pick out a plain gold band, and pocket the money for baby expenses.
A common tactic we’d see (and indeed, suggest, to guys who were on a certain budget) was to prepare a selection of the rings in the middle of his price range, take the prospective fiancee into the private “VIP” lounge, and let the lady pick out the one she liked best.
Occasionally, though, we’d have the sad guy who bought a ring with great hopes returning it within a week, looking sad and dejected. It always seemed like this only happened to young guys (18-20?), that didn’t apparently know their ladies well enough to know whether or not they’d accept a wedding proposal or not. Older guys seemed to always get their girl, ring or no ring.
I do remember one particularly pathetic fellow who massively, MASSIVELY, overspent in an attempt to win a girl over that had already said no. The original ring was a fairly mundane 1/2 carat solitaire ($1000). The payments on that ring were just about what the guy could reasonably handle without flinching every time he picked up the mail. $50 a month, if memory serves. It (and the proposal) were rejected, but instead of taking his refund and looking for a new girl, the poor kid upped the ante to a $15,000 2 carat solitaire that carried a car-sized payment, plus insurance, just to get him out the door. Poor kid only made $25k a year to begin with. I felt terrible just making out the loan documents, knowing that this was a decision that was going to ruin his financial life. I was horrified when it was approved. I actually HOPED that it would be returned - and believe me, the comission on that ring was a right tasty little morsel that made my coworkers drool - but it stayed sold. God bless America.
Hell, I barely got a proposal. I still yank him that he never actually asked me a question, just sort of sidled into it with something like, “I suppose we could just get married . . .” And we’ll celebrate our 20th anniversary this summer.
We bought my ring several months later, after very leisurely shopping. He gave me a budget of about $1000, and I picked a ring for about $300 that was just what I wanted: a simple anniversary band. I never was a “big rock” girl.
My wedding band is gold with a sort of swirly pattern. It was also about $300. His plain gold band was about $90. We’ve been talking about getting different rings for our 20th, but I dunno. I really like my wedding band, so maybe we’ll just get him something nicer for a band and something else for me.
I think it’s funny that you ignored the “pay a few months rent” option, and dove right in trying to make the OP look like an idiot, all while ignoring the reasoning “Instead of spending all this money and potentially going into debt so we both have to work so often that we rarely even get to see each other!”
Honeymoons are done by both people, vacations are done by both people, houses are lived in by both people… but only one person gets to wear that ring, and it serves no real purpose other than being something shiny. (Yes, yes… symbol of our commitment, yes yes… yada yada yada.)
My wife asked me not to get her a ring, so I didn’t. I never really “proposed,” as such anyway. We lived together for eight years before we got married, and when we were both close to finishing college, we decided we might as well get married. I don’t remember much of the discussion or who brought it up, but there was no big moment or question, just a rational discussion and decision. It was like we were discussing buying a car. We are not romantic people, and we both abhor sappy sentiment, which is one of the reasons we are so well-suited for each other. My wife thought a ring would be an irresponsible purchase (and an ethically questionable one for anything with diamonds on it). She told me that if I tried to buy her one anyway, she would just take it back. That was fine with me. We got simple gold wedding bands. Neither one of us owns a single other piece of jewelry.
