Engagement rings

I had a Texan colleague about 12 years ago who said that the 'norm' back home was 6 months salary on an engagement ring . Total madness

bluecanoeforyou

Of course there are going to be exceptions, rings that were bespoke designed, famous previous owners etc. But generally speaking new rings are a bit like new cars in that they lose value the moment you walk out the shop/showroom with them.

@PanGalaticGargleBlaster I don't think this is true - I have an antique engagement ring (Art Deco) and it was more expensive for its size/cut/colour/clarity than many new rings because of its history and provenance.

It's like the £50 minimum wedding gift requirement or having to cover the cost of your meal

"Covering your plate" is an Irish custom (and possibly other places, I don't know).

I remember an advertising campaign by deBeers years ago where they quoted the 3 months salary thing.

It was originally a months salary. I'd never heard of 3 months until this thread.

DH and I both had engagement rings, and we both wear wedding rings. I also have a ring on my other hand that I bought for myself when I was confirmed in post in the job of my dreams - so I wear my domestic commitments on one hand and my professional one on the other. We were young and poor when we got married, and I was much older and richer when I bought my work ring (so the work one is significantly more expensive than the engagement ring), but none of them cost three months' salary or anything like it!

I do think rings are a feminist issue, but we can remake the traditions in ways that suit us and reflect equal relationships. Just as marriage is originally patriarchal, and many of the trappings of a modern wedding reflect that, but both the wedding and the marriage can be remade to be an equal partnership.

the '3 month salary' thing is still alive and well
Is it though? I'd never even heard of it until I started using MN.
It has never ever been mentioned in any conversation I have ever had in real life. It definitely isn't a factor for anyone I know.
A few people say it and lots of people believe that it is real.
It's like the £50 minimum wedding gift requirement or having to cover the cost of your meal. It's an urban myth.

When we became serious we got each other rings which weren't engagement rings but I suppose 'commitment' rings. We didn't wear on the ring finger, but we each wore a ring so there was no ownership of anyone by anyone.

We decided to get married not long after my mother passed, so choosing to wear her engagement ring that she'd bequeathed to me didn't feel like a sign of ownership by my now DH, as me choosing to wear a nice piece of jewellery that reminds me of her.

We both wear wedding bands.

I don't see these as male control as a PP said.

Yep. If DH had even thought about doing that, I wouldn't have been able to marry him because clearly he'd have been too daft to saddle myself with.

The three month salary thing is just an advertising gimmick that has moved into popular belief, like Santa wearing Coca Cola colours red and white

It isn't just about second hand. Depending on what we mean by a few and a couple, and not wanting to get too nit picky, even £300 would more than buy a diamond solitaire of the engagement ring type, new. I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to telling the difference between stones, but then so are a lot of the population. I wouldn't personally be able to see much difference between, say, these sub £300 rings from H Samuel:

www.hsamuel.co.uk/webstore/d/2981041/9ct+two+colour+gold+square+illusion+diamond+solitaire+ring/

www.hsamuel.co.uk/webstore/d/9578900/9ct+white+gold+diamond+solitaire+ring/

.... and these more expensive jobbies from the pricier end of the High Street.

www.beaverbrooks.co.uk/0111340/18ct-White-Gold-Diamond-Ring/p

www.beaverbrooks.co.uk/0012239/9ct-White-Gold-Diamond-Ring/p

They're all variations on probably the commonest engagement ring style of the past 10-15 years. One of them is five times the price of the cheapest, yet I would not be confident in my ability to accurately order them by price in a blind test.

I mean obviously, if there's a massive rock on there then that's probably more expensive than a smaller one, unless it's vintage then all bets are off. Though personally I dislike rings with a big diamond and would not have been pleased if my husband had got me that. And this is not an unusual view amongst women either, it certainly isn't the case that everyone wants a bigger stone than the next woman. I have heard large stones described as tacky, in fact.

Basically, even a cheap ring potentially gives a woman the status of being 'taken' because society tells us having a man is an achievement. You can get a good dollop of this with a sub £300 ring.

GrabEmByThePatriarchy

The genius of the engagement ring market is that it is considered poor form to buy a second hand ring. You are quite right that a ring can be bought for a few hundred quid but that’s because not many people want a second hand ring. It’s considered bad luck or just ‘tight’ to buy a used ring. Although few women would admit it engagement rings are used as status symbols as well in the ‘look at me my man just spent £££££ on this rock and it’s bigger then your ring’.

I think it's hard to separate how much of the 'success' stuff is down to get a man to shell out for a ring and how much of it is the general attitude that the ultimate success for a woman is being with a man. Especially as a diamond ring can be had for a couple of hundred pounds easily enough, and most people wouldn't necessarily know the difference between that and a 3 month wage one. So I think there's an element of that with engagement rings, but I also think it would still exist pretty much the same way if the concept of engagement rings suddenly vanished overnight.

Most men would be more then delighted if the purchasing of engagement rings fell out of favour. For all the people on here claiming they don’t care about such traditions or see them as antiquated patriarchal control you are clearly swimming against the tide here. Men are still be very much judged on the engagement ring they buy. Whenever a women at work announces her engagement it is not the men swarming over to her desk to see ‘the ring’.

'Feminism isn't just about having the choice between A or B, it's about breaking down the barriers that stop women from seeing all the other options from C to Z.'

Spot on

Engagement rings gross me out too, for all the reasons listed above. I find it quite depressing that they're still so popular, and that the '3 month salary' thing is still alive and well

Engagement rings do gross me out a bit. Especially the whole “man should spend X months salary” tradition. Definitely implying a “breadwinner-homemaker” / bride price type arrangement. Unless that tradition changes to “whoever makes more buys the ring” or both buy for the other it’s definitely sexist.

But I don’t see an issue with wedding bands. Men and women both wear them don’t they?

I was only engaged for like 4 months (we’d already been together for 4 years prior and lived together for 3 so no reason for long engagement). We ordered bands right away and both wore them since. It’s a sign we are in a committed long term partnership, nothing more.

get a man to spend a fortune on you or you’re unsuccessful as a woman. Then occupy yourself with planning a wedding for the next two years - taking up all your time and money - spend a fortune on a pretty dress that you’ll wear for one day - and all your friends and family will really think you’ve made it.
But weddings don't have to be anything like that! There is so much more choice freely available to people these days. I have been to many non-traditional weddings that bear no resemblance to that. Mine couldn't have been further from it. I've spent more on and taken more time to choose my outfit for a night out than I did for my entire wedding day. It was planned a few weeks in advance and paid for jointly. The marriage was important to us, the wedding wasn't.

No time to read the whole thread right now but yes, they are definitely a feminist issue (as is marriage).

I’ve been married 3 times and never had an engagement ring - I wear a wedding ring but so does my husband and neither of us would be put out if the other didn’t want to wear one.

Going into marriage number three we were definitely aware that it was a legal contract - we looked into doing all the same stuff with a solicitor but
a) you can’t assign ‘next of kin’ for medical consent in any other way and we’re both getting on a bit
b) it wouldn’t have been any cheaper than a cheap wedding - we decided we’d rather spend the cash on prosecco for our mates than on solicitors fees.

We had no ‘aisle’ no ‘giving away’ and no mention of ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ - the registrar pronounced us ‘legally married’ instead.

We might’ve had a civil partnership instead, if that was an option for opposite couples at the time - I think there are some slight legal differences though, so we would’ve had to explore that properly before deciding.

If I had the money, I'd buy myself a divorce ring. There's one I've had my eye on for a few years in Tiffany's. Think I'll start saving....

De Beers really can fuck off! You'd think they'd had enough of pilfering the world's resources and then marking them up crazy amounts but they will never stop wanting more

Iwanna, I've got adblock, so I've not seen that, but how fab

Love that de Beers will be getting charged for me to tell them to fuck off.

Fuck off again, de Beers!

I love that the advert on this thread is for DeBeers - on the feminist board where the women are the least likely to buy into their months/3 months salary spend bollocks! Clearly their tech only picked up on their name being mentioned in 5his thread and not the 'fuck off, price fixers' bit

My dad is definitely one of those 'you need my permission before you get engaged' people & I am just not interested in doing that. He'll get it sprung on him like everyone else

Off Topic but: I used to occasionally wear a Ring that looked like a Wedding Ring in my twenties, because it spared me some unwanted attention. So I can‘t say these types of rings are all bad...