…as it does in this Pandagon post, I wonder whether anyone else felt like my husband and I did — that having rings was a tangible reminder of each other’s presence and love, even when we weren’t in the same place. I was living alone in Iowa when we got formally engaged (we’d been informally engaged for a long time before that), and it was nice to be able to put on my ring as a reminder of him. We got him an engagement ring, too, which I understand he wore (more often than I did) for the same reason.
I like gifts of jewelry for this reason. My best friend gave me a seahorse pendant with an aquamarine eye (my engagement ring features an aquamarine because we were not about to do diamonds, cuz no fucking way) that I wear to remind me of her. I still wear the $20 shell pendant my husband gave me when we started dating. And I make my own jewelry as memorials, for instance the blown glass pendant filled with suns and stars that I wear to commemorate the writing workshop where I decided I was going to be a professional writer.
I make jewelry for people that I hope will serve the same function. It’s really fun to sit down with a collection of stones and crystals and glass and try to figure out how to capture a friend’s tastes and personal style, as well as some of your affection for them, in an attractive, material object.
Then again, I know that other people are interacting with the cultural symbols of engagement and wedding rings differently than we did — simply from things like the scandalized and angry reactions we had when we went shopping for engagement rings and told people we weren’t going to buy diamonds. Several jewelers told us we HAD to. And then we left. It took a while before we found a small family-owned store where someone said “oh, how European!” and sat down and helped us decide on what we wanted, an aquamarine center stone with two violet sapphires around it, all of the colors supposed to wash together like the gray-blue of the sea on a cloudy day, which is both my favorite color and a very prevalent hue in the city where my husband and I met and left our hearts.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that consumer choice (I have a pink ipod instead of a green one! A relatively inexpensive aquamarine ring instead of a wow-expensive diamond!) is a true expression of individual identity… but I always figured the only reason to follow any of the wedding traditions would be if it was fun. And for me, finding relatively-inexpensive relatively-non-bloody jewelry was fun. And it gives me a tangible and shiny symbol for when I want my husband with me and he’s not there — or when he is with me, and we want to share memories and emotions or just look at pretty rocks.
I kept thinking of ways to say I agree, and all of them were about me how my choices to engage in the wedding tradition were unique and feminist, and I realized it isn’t about that.
So, I will simply say – I agree.
My engagement ring has a recycled garnet in it, because I wanted a stone that looked like a pomegranate seed, which is emotionally and culturally significant in my relationship–and didn’t want to buy into the Great Expense Equals Love thing. We ended up deciding to get rings for exactly the reason you describe–we wanted a tangible reminder of each other, as well as a way to write each other on our daily, visible selves. It was months after the engagement when we finally got them. And we wanted to give each other something pretty that would still fit in a long time.
That is, what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me.
Wow. I could have written this post myself! Even though diamond is my birthstone (April), I’ve never really wanted one. My engagement ring (which has been on my hand for my college graduation, my wedding, my daughter’s birth) is an aquamarine, my hubby’s birthstone) with small diamonds around it. I really think some jewelery chooses you instead of the other way around. I think the stone should fit the personality and aquamarines are a metaphysical sign of good communication between partners. Coupled with the unbreakable diamond…a perfect ring for me. Our wedding bands are handmade Trinity Knots in silver from Ireland…symbolic of Infinity and a bond with God. Just the three of us. I’ve always hated the women who compete with “how big their diamond is” when it comes to saying yes to a lifelong commitment.
While I don’t feel that way about my wedding ring, per se (I like having it, but I wish we’d had the budget to pick out something that was more representative of us – instead, we settled for matching rings from Robbins Bros, yellow gold with a band of faceted white gold in the middle), I do feel that way about a pendant I recently found at the mall. It’s a heavy bronze/brass (whatever, it’s probably fake) circle with a Japanese cherry tree in the center, and for want of a better description – it speaks to me. Its weight is comforting against my skin and there’s just something about it that makes me miss it when it’s not there. I’m even thinking of having the design tattooed.
But yeah. Crabs in the barrel, always. If it’s not about the size of the rock, it’s about how amazingly awesomely uniquely snowflakey you are for having zigged instead of zagged and gotten a not-diamond.
I love the idea of inexpensive jewelry used to remind one of certain people or places. I am kind of sentimental that way. I really like the idea of the sapphires around the aquamarine center to remind one of a particular city and in turn a particular person.
I have to admit though that even though I hate wearing rings (they bug me), I had a very hard time with the lack of a ring because of all that meant, i.e. No one picked me! It was a big struggle for me to get past that and see that my worth as a person or as a woman had to come from myself and not some dude. It is funny how what can seem like a disaster at first can turn into something really positive. I think that if some guy had bestowed me with The Ring, I would still be walking around thinking that my worth somehow came from that guy. Plus I would be walking around with a ring on my finger even though I don’t like wearing rings. Whew, another bullet dodged! As soon as my value came from myself, I became awesome.
Yes, we did something very similar. We both got engagement rings and mine wasn’t a diamond (though his has a very small Canadian one). We spent a long time picking them out together, so the process of getting the rings itself was a very meaningful and reflective time. It was a commitment that we were going to do things our way, as corny as that sounds.
Symbols are powerful and useful, and I like them (though sometimes I am irritated at how easily something can become a symbol of something that I don’t associate it with, and then its symbolic power interferes with its practical use).
I don’t really like rings (I prefer other kinds of jewelry), but I wear one. It’s partly for the personal symbolism, and partly for the societal symbolism–it is really useful for people to assume (correctly, in my case) that I am sexually and romantically unavailable, just by looking at my hand. As much as I would have liked our wedding to be more about personal symbolism, it too ended up being largely about bowing to the expectations and symbolism of society/family/community.
Although I have very sentimental feelings about my ring, and I value its usefulness, in an ideal world (where it wasn’t so useful to signal my unavailability) I would choose some other symbol of our relationship. I think it’s worth noting that, from a practical point of view, jewelry is particularly suited to functioning as this kind of symbol.
I bought my partner a ring long before we (and by ‘we’ I’m pretty sure I mean ‘I’, here) were anywhere near to talking about legally binding togetherness, for exactly these reasons: I wanted him to have that tangible reassurance that, no matter how weird things get for us (and they can get pretty weird), we’re in it together.
I didn’t expect that after a few months of him fiddling the ring whenever he was stressed or nervous or just thinking really hard, I would develop a habit of fidgeting with my own empty ring finger. (The finger RIGHT NEXT to the finger on which I wear a large, antique ring inherited from my grandmother.) But that’s exactly what happened. And it started to get really, really irritating, constantly catching myself trying to fiddle with something that wasn’t there. And then I went through a whole lot of quasi-feminist, anti-consumerist guilt because I shouldn’t need a damn piece of jewelry to know that we’re together, and I never had one before, so why do I feel sorta lacking now? What has the romance industry done to my brain?
Eventually, I decided that this really was less about the romance industry and me being a screaming harpy demanding jewels, and more about us, about mutuality and reciprocity, and that really the most sane thing for me to do in this situation was to tell him that I was feeling bizarrely naked without a ring of my own, and it was bothering me way more than it should, but that’s the way it is, and could we please fix this now? But it’s amazing the amount of anxiety that went into starting that conversation.
We found a local jeweler and had our rings made to spec. They’re both the same (and collectively unique) are very meaningful since we designed them together, and were less than a premade “official” wedding band. It’s not a bad route to take.
Good for you. The tale of your love for each other is for you to tell, not for someone else – especially not some merchant.
The engagement ring I gave my wife was a diamond ring, but a) that was – good Lord – 37 years ago, and b) it is a family heirloom. Specifically, it had been passed down through 3 mother-daughter generations on the eldest daughter’s 16th birthday (I’m not clear on how the initial gift occurred – I should ask my mother). But my mother had no daughters, so she decided it should go to her first daughter-in-law. Nothing gaudy, just a 1/4 carat solitare. When my daughter turned 16 I took my wife to a nice restaurant downtown and gave her a decidedly more expensive diamond ring (again, this was a while ago, and “blood diamonds” wasn’t a concept that had any publicity then) and then she gave her ring to our daughter.
As far as non-traditional engagement practices go, my wife’s engagement present to me (certainly a non-traditional concept in itself in 1973) was a bicycle. A Schwinn 5-speed, to be exact. It was the first bicycle I’d ever owned (at age 21!) and I was pretty shaky learning how to ride it.
That’s awesome. :-D
My husband proposed with the ring that his dad had used to propose to his mother when they were teenagers in 1960, and like RonF, my father-in-law got my mother-in-law a much more expensive ring when he could afford it. I’m really bad at wearing rings — I’d already lost a jade ring set in silver that he’d gotten me when we’d been dating for a year :-( — so I only wore the engagement ring for special occasions, especially after the time I left it in a school bathroom because I’d taken it off to wash my hands and then forgotten to put it back on. I’m trying to be better about wearing my wedding rings now that we’re married, as my husband wears his every day (even though the ring was irritating his skin for several months), but it makes me a bit nervous because I’m afraid of losing them.
heh.
my wife actually has a reasonably nice diamond engagement ring (I didn’t know about blood diamond when i bought it back then, though perhaps i should have). It sits unworn. I keep trying to get her to sell it and buy something else she likes, or something for us, but she refuses.
For many years, I wore an heirloom ring from my own family in the place an engagement ring would go. That ring was with me through so many things. One side was pressed flat from carrying buckets of water from the well to our house when I was in Peace Corps. Last year, I lost the ring. We were on a bike ride, and I put my arm out to signal a turn. The ring flew off and bounced across the street. We walked up and down both sides of the street for blocks in either direction for more than an hour before eventually giving up.
It was a diamond ring with a design that I would describe as Art Deco, but I’m not sure that’s right. I got a lot of compliments on it, and I’ve never seen one that was even similar. I had assumed it was my great-grandmother’s ring, but it turns out it was a ring my great-grandfather bought to propose to a woman who ended up turning him down. This would have been after his first wife, my grandmother’s mother, died, but before he married his second wife. He eventually have the ring to his daughter, my grandmother, who gave it to me when I got engaged but was going about with a bare finger.
While I liked the ring quite a bit, I hadn’t realized how attached I was to it until I lost it. It’s been more than a year, and the sight of my finger with just the wedding band still strikes me as odd or exposed.
If the time ever came for me to get married, I don’t think I would do an engagement ring at all (really just not a fan of jewelry) but I would do a nontradtitional, non diamond wedding ring that I picked out with my partner.
Moxie, as a fellow April birthstoner, white sapphire is a good substitution if you happen to like the diamond look in something but not actual diamonds.
There is one thing that I have never understood among the engagement ring as status symbol set. Why not buy a large *fake* stone? I can’t tell the difference between a fake diamond and a real one. Can other people?
My one regret about my and my husband’s engagement is that we didn’t get an engagement ring for him. My (diamond) ring was my mother’s – she didn’t wear it after the divorce, and gave it to me when I got engaged. No regrets there, even though I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that men would see me as “tagged.”
Regarding feminism/anti-feminism/capitalism/consumerism/etc. – there are plenty of screwed up things going on in Western culture that we still derive pleasure and fulfillment from. No one’s going to scrub themselves completely clean of consumerism and patriarchy. It’s important to be aware of these things, but personal choice still needs to be key.
How about that, eh? My wife taught me how to ride a bike, not my parents or brothers. My older brothers had bikes, but I was the family geek and nobody thought I was interested in stuff like bikes and skates (something else I was never up on until college). I rode that thing around Boston and Cambridge for about a year. Then we bought matching bikes, Raleigh SuperCourses with alloy frames. We rode those a LOT. They were more convenient than a car in getting around while I was finishing up at school. We still have them. Mine needs a new rear derailleur, which one of these days I will buy.
But the concept that I should get an engagement present as well as my wife was decidedly novel back then. There was a certain amount of comment, but I thought it emphasized the concept of equality between the two of us.
L,
The apocryphal story I’ve heard about the origin of engagement rings is that once a woman became engaged, others would think that she might well be participating in sexual activity with her betrothed. In cultures that valued women’s chastity (i.e. most of them), if the engagement were broken off the woman would be seen as devalued and would have trouble finding another man to be her husband. So the engagement ring forced the man to pony up something of value to underlie his promise of marriage; kind of like a bail bond to ensure that the defendant will show up for court. If he married the woman, it would revert to being property held within his family, but if he broke off the engagement, it wouldn’t. This supposedly also is why there’s an etiquette convention that if a woman breaks off the engagement, she is obligated to return the ring, but if a man does, he is not supposed to ask for the ring back (although can accept it if it is offered).
PG, what I heard (nothing to back this up, just read it somewhere a few years back so it could be completely false), was that engagement rings are a somewhat recent thing. Used to be that only women wore wedding rings and then as it became more common for men to wear them too it got pushed that women (only) now needed engagement rings.
If that is the case (or partly the case) I wonder what would happen if it became common for men also to wear engagement rings….
This reminds me of my wedding planning too. I wanted a coloured stone, and picked sapphire because it’s almost as durable as diamond, and purdy. Most people who saw it said “how beautiful, is it your birth stone?” (it isn’t), but a few people were flabbergasted that not only did I not GET a diamond, I didn’t WANT a diamond.
Also, how stupid of the jewelers to turn down your business. I walked into a formal/bridal store looking for a sample of a silver/blue gown I’d seen a photo of, and the woman asked me what the occasion was. Me: “I’m looking for a wedding dress” Shop Lady: “But this isn’t a WEDDING gown” Me: “It is if I wear it while getting married” Frowning Shop Lady: “Hmmm, well we don’t have one in, if you buy it, then you can try it on”. I did not buy it. In contrast, another store was totally cool with me trying on sample bridesmaid’s gowns as wedding gown candidates, and I ordered the bridesmaid’s dresses through them. Moral of the story: telling off potential clients is a great way to lose business.
Yeah, I’d just been a bridesmaid in a very pretty (red) dress about 6 months before the wedding, so we ordered the dress in another color (purple) and voila.
It’s been my #1 tip to my getting-married friends. Buy a bridesmaids dress because they’re 1,000,000,000x cheaper.
PG,
I have heard that before too. I have also heard that it is a recent tradition but someplace else I heard that it has been a tradition since classical Roman times. *shrug* Although wikipedia was not helpful on that point, their article was quite interesting
Wikipedia – Engagement ring
What gets to me is that the husband usually doesn’t get an engagement ring, and his wedding ring is usually much plainer. This custom is unfair to men, obviously, and also unfair to women in that it can be seen as symbolizing that women are goldiggers.
Hubby and I have matching wedding rings: very plain white gold bands. I also wanted a sapphire, but it also has diamond chips from a local store that guarantees theirs. I know the guarantee system isn’t perfect, but increased pressure for clean diamonds is a good thing in the long run.
PG – I’ve heard that, but more than anything I think the key idea is that of a material commitment to a relationship. Since the theory is that women want to settle down while men don’t, men need to “prove” that they’re serious about the commitment by slapping down some cash. And quite frankly, I think there’s something to it, although it’s not unproblematic.
Ha, L. My partner actually specifically asked for a fake stone because then she could get something really impressive looking without wasting money we could use for things more important to us. Because nobody except a trained jeweler can know the difference, sorry. It’s pretty, it’s shiny, it’s emotionally significant. The only thing you get by paying the extra ten thousand for the “real thing” is the knowledge that it cost more, and maybe a little more durability.
We opted for very non-traditional tattoos instead of rings. We each have a symbol of our family in the same place on our arms.
My mum had an emerald and no-one thought it was at all odd.
“My partner actually specifically asked for a fake stone”
We wanted lab-created stones, just to avoid gem mining, but the jeweler requested that we not do that on the basis of difficulty finding what we wanted in lab-created stones (I specifically wanted low purity aquamarine to get a lighter color, and that kind of thing).
I was married for a few years when I was much younger, and much more easily pushed around by the expectations of my extended family and society at large. I had a wedding ring and an engagement ring, even though I hated wearing any kind of jewelry on my hands. I didn’t have a diamond, because my partner and I didn’t like diamonds nearly as much as colored stones…more than one of my relatives told us, more than once, that the marriage failed because we didn’t have a “proper” ring. (Alcoholism, depression, and graduate advisors who really don’t want their students to have families all being irrelevant.)
I don’t plan to marry again, but I have two serious long-term relationships where we talk about staying together for 45 years. (http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/s/stanrogers9907/45years324743.html) I used to dislike wearing rings, but the chronic hand pain I’ve had for the last 12 years makes it even worse. So my boyfriend gave me a pin, and I always wear it. Nobody recognizes it as symbolic of anything, but I often reach for it when I want a little tangible reassurance of being loved. I also have a locket that’s been significant to me since I was a teenager. Now it’s even more significant, because it has a curl of my girlfriend’s hair in it.