Wedding Blog

1) I have a “fake” aka man made diamond. I used to care. For a little while I was upset by it even though I was the one who wanted it that way. But, I have since gotten over it. It worked for a number of reasons - its gorgeous, it was affordable, and it went with my moral/political stance. Granted my mother doesn’t not know, nor do any of my friends - EXCEPT my maid of honor - and she got her own engagement ring after she was married. Regardless, in the end although e-rings are great, eventually you have to stop looking at your hand and move on with your life. $10,000 or $1,000. AND, my fiance has an engagement ring. PEOPLE LOVE IT. Guys especially, surprisingly. Brazilian and German cultures do this…and we did - and we both get new bands at the wedding.

I wanted a non-diamond center stone, but my this was more due to my love of color vs. anything else. I fell in love with an antique setting that has a lot of very tiny diamonds in it, and since it was in-store we didn’t want to have to pay more to have them take the diamonds out.

So I guess I’m sort of inbetween. I have diamonds, but I didn’t really want the ring for the diamonds in it. Anything that looked good with the tsavorite in the middle was fine.

I like the idea of wearing a ring, even the engagement ring. But I am not happy about wearing a big diamond. Fiance went and bought it and presented it as part of the proposal so I guess I’ll wear it. But when we go shopping for wedding rings I’m going to either trade in the engagement ring or let him know that it’s just going to sit in a box most of the time.

I’m hoping for either a Ruby or a Black diamond when the time comes.
I don’t like regular diamonds because they are boring (to me). I’ve never wanted a diamond but have always wanted a Ruby since it is my birthstone but also my Grandmother’s birthstone as well.
I think it’s a preference. I have a blue sapphire promise ring that I love. I’m more of a color person with jewelry.

I’m so glad you blogged about this article because I was bothered when I read it this morning. While I agree with most points in the article, the tone was sort of…condescending. My FI and I both have an engagement ring (he likes to call his a “mengagement ring”). I didn’t appreciate the idea of being tagged as engaged while he wasn’t, and he didn’t think it was fair that I get a nice ring and he gets nothing. I have issues with diamonds, but I absolutely love the ring he picked out for me. So we decided to go with a Canadian diamond (or so our certification says). I think it’s a personal choice for everyone. Perhaps I didn’t relate to the article because it joined a series of articles that for the most part kind of painted all brides as excessive. I know there are people like that out there, but I think most of us just want to have a meaningful wedding.

I’m engaged and do not have a diamond. I didn’t grow up expecting a diamond and I don’t care for the bling. If he got me one, that’s his priority but I always said that I don’t need one. And if we followed the expected standard of 2 or 3 months salary, the bling would be 12K or 18K and I for one cannot imagine wearing that much bling on my person.

Cool, relevant post!

The only way I would really want a diamond enagement ring is if it were an heirloom.

I do not want to contribute to the industry/image by sporting one (real or fake or synthetic). Partially it is from moral views, partially it is from the desire to be different. I think the value is definitely perceived and overdone (at least in America).

I would have loved an aquamarine ring but he went with a diamond. I love it and wouldn’t trade it in but a diamond wasn’t the priority with me.

My diamond is an estate purchase, which I love. It is antique, has a history, and no one died for me to have it. We are not following any rules or traditions for our wedding and my FI did not do so for the purchase of my ring either.

I think the article is a little zealous. It makes a few good points, but also makes a lot of statements that are stereotypical and assume a “mob” mentality.

I think the article is excessively cynical. Yes, I like pretty things. so what. I probably would feel weird if my fiance had spent 2 months salary on my ring (jeeze… that’s almost our wedding budget.) As it is, my ring cost about half what my fiance spends on his high end bikes.

I didn’t want a diamond, mostly because of sociopolitical reasons — not only the conditions of the mine workers and possibly funding violence, but also the environmental impact of mining in general — and also, a little bit, I would have liked a red or rose-colored stone. My betrothed is a little more traditional on such things, and he would not hear of a red stone (or a red wedding gown either). I was looking into Moissanite and lab-created diamonds.

As things turned out, his mother had a diamond ring that she found beneath the cushions of a couch (!) years ago, and she offered us the stone, which we gladly accepted and had set in a custom-made setting. I am very happy that my love didn’t have to spend any money for the diamond, that we weren’t funding diamond mining (admittedly the gold in the ring is new), and that I get to have a truly unique ring that’s just the shape I wanted.

I am considering purchasing our wedding rings from greenKarat because they use recycled gold.

i got engaged without a ring. i’m against diamonds for many reasons, but mostly for moral/political reasons. i’ve felt this way for a long time, way before the movie blood diamond came out. i also look at big engagement rings and think about who might have died for those diamonds.

also aesthetically, a big diamond is just not for me. i’m a little too casual to have a big fancy rock on my finger all the time, and i think that a lot of rings with a central diamond are just too showy and a little boring for me. (but sometimes they do look great on other people.) i also don’t like the idea of wearing two rings.

so my boyfriend’s grandmother had an old diamond engagement ring which his parents kept telling me i should have, but i just didn’t like it. then i found out that my late grandfather also had some diamonds from an old tie pin of his, and my mother suggested i take all of the old diamonds and make them into a new ring. so now i am planning to take them to a jeweler to have a new ring made up with the 3 or 4 medium-sized diamonds (hopefully with recycled gold), which will serve as my wedding ring.

i have to admit that when i wear my ring, i think i will tell everyone where my diamonds came from so they will know i didn’t support debeers….but i think the ring will be beautiful, and it will be really special to me because it will combine something from both of our families.

I got sold on the whole “Kimberley process” being non-conflict stones. This is an industry created standard and should be taken with a grain of salt. Plus, “non-conflict” does not equal humane conditions for workers- it just means that militias aren’t involved in the sales (maybe). Nor does it guarantee a decent level of environmental clean-up during or after the mining. I really wish I would have stuck to my earlier inclination and insisted on fake stones.

What’s strange about the “gender inequality” is that I will just have the one ring, while Mr Mouse currently wears and engagement ring, soon to be replaced by his wedding band. Could you put that in a poll? I’m wondering how many women only have or want one ring and how many engaged males wear an engagement ring.

I saw this article.

A bit more feminist by comparison to some of my friends (though certainly not all), I’m frustrated when women seemingly have to be “one or the other” and this article seemed to perpetuate that mindset. Social issues of the diamond industry aside, this article made me think that I should feel ashamed for having an engagement ring at all, never mind the diamond/gemstones in it. If my fiance were the type to wear jewelry, it’d be awesome for him to wear a ring as well.

I admit it, I like this ring on my finger, even if I might be “feminist.” But I would like more equality between women (”feminist” vs. …not feminist) even more.

the whole “tradition” is totally absurd, and you’re fooling yourself if you think you can find a non-conflict diamond (how in the world could anyone tell them apart???). it’s just another way women are manipulated into spending money (or having their finances spend money) on something that is meaningless, for someone else’s benefit.

a couple of months before i got engaged, my fiance and i randomly started talking about this and i made my views pretty clear. he had been in the process of designing my ring and had to go back to the jeweler and switch it from a diamond with two sapphires to a sapphire with two diamonds. i think he, too, got caught up in the hype. he saw what his colleagues’ wives were wearing and thought he had to make a good showing and went ahead and put a couple of large diamonds in the ring anyway. i really think it’s stupid. my ring is beautiful for what it represents, and for the inscription inside of it. i hate the fact that it’s neither environmentally friendly nor humane, and that it means we’ve been suckered.

[...] crunches when first starting out. Some replace the CZs with diamonds later; others never do. (A recent survey on Weddingbee.com found that 1% of respondents had fake diamonds and planned to trade up at a later date, while 2% [...]