I’ve only started noticing women doing this in the past several years. Is it a recent trend or am I just unobservant?
And if it is recent, is there any historic tradition regarding whether to and where to wear an engagement ring after marriage? Or did it just get stuffed into a box and put away?
Thanks.
It’s standard in the U.K.
You mean next to each other or actually one on top of the other? Engagement/wedding ring sets, designed to be worn together, have been around forever, and most women I know who ever had an engagement ring still wear it unless it’s been replaced with an anniversary ring.
This has been common for a long time. I got my wife a wedding/engagement set. She wore the engagement ring with the stone until our wedding, and then added the wedding ring that went with it. We’ve been married 25 years.
My whole, entire life I’ve always seen women wearing the wedding ring (usually a band, plain or jeweled) topped with the engagement ring (usually a solitaire diamond). They’re usually bought in sets and meant to be worn together. Why would you ever stuff it in a box and put it away??? (Although I did remove my ginormous diamond and put it away when I became a mom, didn’t want to scratch my kid, and wore it again a few years later.) I say, if you have nice rings, wear them and enjoy them, your hands are going to show signs of age before your face does.
I agree. My mother (married '43) and grandmother (married '11) both wore wedding and engagement rings on same left hand finger. I recall my grandmother telling me traditionally the wife removed the engagement ring and wore the wedding ring lower on the finger with the engagement ring higher. Given she said this was a tradition I assume wearing them both on the same finger went back well before her wedding.
Huh. Well, thanks guys. (I’m referring to wearing one ring on top of the other, yes.) Is there any reason they aren’t just worn on different fingers/hands?
(Personally, I think it’s kind of tacky and diminishes the attractiveness of the individual rings, but if other people like it, whatever works for them. Edit: I’m referring to stacking the rings in this parenthetical.)
On top like one ring has a larger diameter and fits over the other so that it is obscured? Because that I have never seen.
No, stacked vertically.
Like this?
I’ve never paid much attention to how people wear their wedding rings and I have no plans to get married anytime soon, but my understanding is that it is the standard way to wear them here in Sweden.
Yes.
I can think of several good reasons, the most obvious being that the left ring finger is the traditional place for both engagement and wedding rings. A ring on any other finger has no special meaning.
If the ring was sized to fit the woman’s left ring finger then it’s unlikely to fit any other finger well except for her right ring finger. (And corresponding fingers on different hands aren’t necessarily the same size.) A lot of right-handed people prefer not to wear gold or gems on their right hand because the right hand gets more use and the ring is thus more likely to get bent or chipped or just be in the way.
Totally, totally standard.
After one of my mom’s weddings, the jeweler welded her engagement & wedding rings together, evidently so they wouldn’t get lost as easily. I remember the jeweler talked like it was standard practice. This would have been circa the late 70’s.
My mom’s wedding ring set (purchased in 1967,) had a little clasp mechanism to join the diamond wedding band to the solitaire (engagement ring.) I always assumed that this prevented the diamonds from slipping around in opposite directions…
And I’m now in the process of finding a wedding band that will “go” with my engagement ring, which was inherited, minus a wedding band.
Huh? I’ve never heard of any other arrangement. My mother and all of my female relatives have always worn their rings this way. (Including my grandmother, whose in engagement ring I now have)
Both rings were sized for the same finger. They wouldn’t fit anywhere else.
If you don’t find anything that suits your engagement ring, consider having your wedding band custom made. My engagement ring wasn’t sold with a wedding band, and the goldsmith at the jewellers where the engagement ring came from made me a matching wedding band based upon the design of the engagement ring. It cost us about $500 CDN (I love jewellery, so it was worth it for me!) and it’s the same type of white gold, and he matched the rather detailed scrollwork exactly, only scaled down by a teeny fraction compared to the engagement ring. I’m very happy with it!
If you’re ever near Hamilton, Ontario, I would recommend the goldsmith at Ashley Jewellers, at Limeridge Mall!
Symbolically, the engagement ring represents a promise, and the wedding band seals the deal. “Locking” the engagement ring by wearing the wedding band on the same finger conveys this nicely.
Doesn’t the meaning of a wedding ring make the meaning of an engagement ring obsolete, though? (married versus going to get married)
Hand usage makes sense.
I guess I’m not used to it because my mom didn’t have an engagement ring, so she only wore a wedding band. And I like that husbands and wives both wear a wedding band, it kind of connects them, in a way. Engagement rings just seem more like superfluous bling in comparison, especially given that only women wear them.
Thank you for the responses, everyone.
