The thought of having to wear the same wedding ring for the rest of your life gives many people anxiety. At the same time, the story surrounding the engagement and wedding ring is a rather dirty and unequal story that no one really talks about. In this article I share my thoughts on this. You also get to read the story of Halina wearing seven wedding rings (same man) - and then I reveal what my own non-engagement ring would look like. Written by: Cecilia Kores
When you start working with genuine jewelry, you will quickly notice that the "bread and butter" in our industry are engagement and wedding rings. It is difficult to have a grocery store without selling milk, bread and coffee - and it is a bit like that for us with engagement and wedding rings. At the same time, the story around the engagement and wedding ring is a rather dirty and unequal story that no one really talks about. It is also a purchase that is associated with a lot of anxiety, pressure and expectations - like the question: do you have to wear the same wedding ring all your life?
In this article (and in episode 3 of the Jewelry Podcast) I share my thoughts on this. Hopefully, you will, as much as I, think it's nice to air some new thoughts on a rather old and well-worn topic!
The reason we wear engagement and wedding rings at all is believed to stem from an ancient Roman custom, where wives wore rings attached to small keys, which would signal their husbands' ownership. Fresh, right? The next step in the story is that it is said that the very first diamond ring was made in the 16th century, commissioned by a duke in Austria for his bride Maria. It is also from the 16th century that we find the reason why we wear just two rings - an engagement ring and a wedding ring! Back then, you had rings that consisted of two loops, and when a man and a woman got engaged, they separated the loops and each wore them as a ring. Then, after the wedding ceremony, the two rings were brought together again and the bride wore both rings.
But it was still quite unusual for the general public to wear engagement rings until just over a hundred years ago! Only at the end of the 19th century did engagement rings become common among common men and women. During the wars - around the 1920s and 1930s, of course the design changed and the rings became simpler and the stones smaller. But then came the big event, after the Second World War, when faith and hope for the future once again flowed.
It was then, in the late 1940s, that the diamond mining company De Beers launched the marketing campaign that became a success and that still characterizes us today.
The slogan on that campaign read “A Diamond Is Forever” - and the aim was to show that diamonds were the symbol of an eternal marriage.
It was a fantastically smart move by a company that had been around since 1888 and owned a South African diamond mine that was one of the largest diamond mines in the world at the time. Right up until the 2000s, De Beers then had a near monopoly, controlling 85% of the world's diamond market! It is even the case that to maintain a high price of diamonds, De Beer's stockpiled diamonds and only released a certain number on the market each year that the price was maintained. In a weaker market, several diamonds could be released so that the price did not become too high. Even today, De Beers can be considered to have created one of the most successful monopolies of all time (and managed to control the price of diamonds for a long time)!
Image: Unsplash
When you know this story, that diamond solitaire doesn't really feel as obvious as an engagement ring anymore, does it?Then you should know that the diamond is a special stone - it has been formed deep in the earth for many, many years, it is among the hardest materials that exist and that man has discovered so far, and no other material reflects light as beautiful as diamonds. We will learn about the specific properties of diamonds in more depth in later articles. But the fact that one's engagement ring has to look a certain way because of an effective marketing campaign by a diamond mining company may feel less exciting now.
You may have heard that tradition says that men should spend a certain amount of their salary on the engagement ring?
It comes also from De Beer's marketing campaign!
It said the men would spend about a month's salary on the ring for their future wife. That amount grew to two months' wages in the 1980s, and today it is around three months' wages as a rule of thumb - and this recommendation is actually still used by many. Yes, you hear me. In many ways, this is an incredibly outdated industry led by a few big players, which have probably colored even your view of who gets to wear a ring and what it should look like. There are still any number of girls who wouldn't allow themselves to buy a diamond ring unless it was for an engagement! We notice that many people lock themselves in precisely these unwritten rules "how it should be done". Hopefully, this article will make you feel more free to choose for yourself how and when you wear your jewelry, and how it looks!
Image: Unsplash
I can't talk about this topic without mentioning my colleague Halina. Prior to working as a Personal Jewelry Shopper in Mumbai, she was the Store Manager at Mociun, an inspiring jewelry brand in Brooklyn, New York. Halina is an artist's daughter and singer who lived in New York for eleven years and was one of the first employees at Mociun. During her years in New York, she managed to both meet the man of her life when she served him coffee at a coffee shop where she worked before Mociun, get engaged and marry him - and she also managed to work as a dog walker for, among other things, Henke Lundqvist's dog . And when I met Halina in New York, the year before she moved home to Sweden - she was wearing seven engagement and wedding rings on her ring finger. It was a mix of thin rings and slightly wider ones, some with many stones in them, some with just a few, and the stones had different cuts, different CTs and were set in different types of settings. All the rings were in red gold, or yellow gold as it is also called, and the color scale was white and black by mixing white and black diamonds in the rings. I thought Halina's ring finger was like a demonstration of how to build the perfect ring stack! All the rings were unique in themselves, but together they formed a symbiosis - like one big, beautiful giant ring. After that, she has built on with even more rings - e.g. just a diamond solitaire that she made in our atelier. She doesn't always wear all the rings at the same time. Sometimes she only wears one or two, and sometimes all of them. And I have thought about this, and I see it as perhaps the symbolism is rather the finger, the left ring finger. The rings she wears there represent her family, her husband and daughter. She changes the rings, but when she wears rings on that finger, it symbolizes them.
Image: Unsplash
And that's a little how I myself feel about the whole thing. I don't know why, but I never saw myself getting married, or getting engaged. I never dreamed of it. Which is ironic considering what I'm working on today. (On the other hand, maybe it helps me keep my distance from everything.) However, I can toy with the idea of wearing a ring that can symbolize my guy. I was single for six years before I met him, and even then I always wore rings on my ring finger. I wore rings on all my fingers! However, I often felt that I wanted a power ring on my ring finger - but it was mostly for myself: I liked wearing a big stack or an eye-catching ring that had a cool gemstone. I thought it was fun to break norms - I thought that those who saw my rings on my ring finger and thought I was engaged or married would perhaps be inspired to dare to think outside the box themselves in choosing their rings, but also that I wanted to give myself confident that I was a strong girl who didn't need a partner to be whole. Now that I have a boyfriend, I'm toying a bit with the idea of getting a ring that can symbolize him. What would it look like then? When I chose my own power rings to wear there, I liked to choose bright, happy colors - those are the ones I'm naturally drawn to. Light Champagne, light yellow, light pink, white - but I also have a dark green tourmaline ring at home that I made a few years ago from a gemstone I fell in love with. Now when I think about my guy, I think of course I have to have something black in. He is a guy who loves rock music and cars, he likes to come home from the garage blacked out and as a first Valentine's Day present (when we had been dating for 2 months) I got a pair of black mecca pants from Clas Ohlson. So, I have to have something black in the ring to symbolize him. But then I think that I want something sensational, something extra - because it should symbolize that he came into my life and just gave me something extra. My life was great before him and I had learned to make myself happy (Mumbai for example has made me very happy) - but he came in and gave me like sprinkles in life: like more laughs in everyday life, he helped me fix things and life became a little easier, and he appreciated when I cooked, which gave me an even deeper interest in food. And he made me work less. He made my life a little more relaxed and a little more fun. I want to symbolize all that little extra in something extra with a ring! So, when I think about the ring I want to wear for him (think of it as an engagement ring but without the engagement), I think: a large black diamond - in a rectangular cut, because I think it's a beautiful cut and want to fit now that I've chosen a stone that doesn't sparkle (black diamonds don't sparkle) - but then I want a bright halo around of small white brilliants - which can sparkle a lot. It is the light around him, the light that I got to be a part of. It will be a simple, slightly vintage-inspired but special ring - that makes me think of him and our relationship every time I look down at the ring! And harder than that, I think it doesn't have to be.
Image: Scott Broome/Unsplash
Picture: Nadine Rebecca , Rings: Mumbaistockholm Edith Ring 0.47 CT , Five Diamond Triangle Ring and Casper Clean Ring
Wedding rings are perhaps the jewelry that causes the most stress and pressure in both girls and guys. I hope this article has given you some new perspective! Because otherwise we'll all be walking around with the same plain (but in and of itself beautiful) diamond ring - which may be right for many but is it right for you? Dare to show your personality! Your personality together.
And keep in mind that the very idea that "you should wear something all your life" can cause the most creative soul to lock up. Live in the moment.
Listen to Episode 3: Do you have to wear the same wedding ring your whole life? of Smkykespodden directly below or click here .
