It is very odd. My DD wears my first engagement ring - it is very pretty - but only discovered last year that it is from a previous relationship. She was shocked! i laughed my socks off. The traditional reason for a ring has been overtaken anyway: unless the price is in the mid-6 figures, selling it won't give financial stability if things go tits up with the relationship before the marriage happens.
What we see here on MN time and again, and often in the "still waiting for a proposal" threads is that marriage, the actual marriage with the licence, is still a form of financial security for the more vulnerable/financially weaker partner. And i have no issue with that. I am all for it, in fact.
I probably wouldn't have married when i did if i could have had an easy way of cohabiting, but that's how the dice roll sometimes. And now, decades later, i realise that the stability we have in our relationship partly comes from that piece of paper (easier to work through the kinks than divorce, I'm all for the path of least resistance)
The über-feminist in me tells me that marriage really only need be an issue at times like having children, purchasing a property, or the liklihood that one will fall ill or die before the other. I also realise that not everyone sees it like that.
And knowing that's what i think it surprises people to know that we always have a drink on the anniversary of our first date, and do things that we don't particularly love, to make the other happy (going to tedious hair-band gigs, the opera, the ballet) as well as doing the things we both love. That is quite romantic, IMO, and again, not everyone agrees.
Bling and proposals and a merangue-dress? not so much. (unless you want it)