Engagement Ring

When I proposed to my wife, I didn’t really propose. I actually told her she had no choice and she had to marry me because I said so. (You can only do that power play if you’ve been in control of the relationship and you’re confident of the resulting answer. Otherwise, don’t even ask. I know from experience.) That’s when I gave her a diamond engagement ring.

Months before, I’d been asking myself why people even bother to purchase diamond engagement rings. I mean, assuming you have some sort of ancestry and keep your lineage on record, you can easily have them passed down from generation to generation. Does anyone really want to be buried in their rings? Maybe, but that’s icky. Nobody throws a diamond engagement ring away, and very few lose diamond engagement rings because they never take them off unless they’re asking for trouble.

But then I thought about the math. Let’s say each couple has three children. That means only 33% of diamond engagement rings, maximum, can be passed down, whereas in practice it’s probably less than that, people being buried in them and losing them and what not. So let’s make a liberal estimate of 25%. The means diamond engagement rings have to be continually manufactured in order to satisfy demand. And there’s always the mess of divorce and remarriage that just messes with the statistics.

That being said, I was exceedingly lucky not to have to purchase a diamond engagement ring. My late grandmother’s was more than handy even though I am the youngest of three children, and last to be married. When my brother was married, my grandmother was still living, though my grandfather had gotten her a bigger and better diamond engagement ring when he became successful. (Though by that time they were already married. This is confusing.) Meaning, my grandmother’s “spare”diamond engagement ring was still available, but for some reason he didn’t want it. My sister, being a female, wasn’t about to give her husband-to-be a diamond engagement ring with which to propose to her, so I got the heirloom. It’s nothing too swanky, just a simple ring with a few shiny diamonds in it, but luckily my wife doesn’t know or care about jewelry so much, one of the reasons why I married her. She just wants people to know she’s taken, which I’m not against, and a diamond engagement ring along with a wedding ring does the trick well enough.

So much for DeBeers’ marketing ploy that a man should spend 2-3 months wages for diamond http://www.diamondsdesigners.com/diamonds/buy-diamonds/diamond-broker/engagement rings. I’ll spend it on a house, thank you very much.