You can catch up on the entire thread on engagement rings here. Readers offer more alternatives to the traditional diamond:
A few years back, I heard a stand-up routine about how women get an expensive ring but men get
nothing. The comic (I can’t remember who) suggested a sword as a perfect gift from a wife to her husband. On our wedding day, while I was slapping on my warpaint and my husband-to-be was on the other side of the venue with his retinue, I sent my maid of honor’s husband over with a package. As soon as he saw the long, narrow box he knew exactly what it was.
Let’s just say I won major wife points with the “wedding sword.” It’s currently hanging over our front door, in case of zombie attack.
Another unconventional pick:
My husband and I met in graduate school for forestry. We’re both passionate about our work and have devoted much of our lives to the conservation of forest resources and the responsible use of forest products, so when it came time to get married, I wanted this important part of our lives reflected in our union.
Our engagement was relatively casual, but my husband did give me his mother’s engagement ring. I had the diamond reset in a ring that I happily wore until our wedding. However, since I’m frequently in the woods for work and often working in tropical forests in developing countries, a big diamond ring didn’t fit my everyday life. So for our wedding, I bought us wooden wedding bands. I worked with a carpenter in the US and was able to choose the species of tree for each ring, and ensure the forest of origin was managed to my standards. The rings are gorgeous, reflective of our lives and relationship, and a great conversation piece.
Another reader:
My boyfriend was the marrying type. I wasn’t. He went to Japan for a week. I changed my mind. I realized that because I was the one with the cold feet, I was the one who had to propose. But do you have any idea how hard it is to find a MALE engagement ring? (Oh wait, I guess you do.) I finally settled on a silver AIDS bracelet as a “promissory note” and then we could go shopping for a ring later. Well, he loved being proposed to and loved the bracelet. He wore the bracelet every single day for years until he lost it when a paragliding line snapped it off of his wrist.
Meanwhile, I have a simple gold wedding band on my finger. When I see it or play with it, it reminds me of him. I don’t need a big rock to feel sentimental.
Another:
If you really do want a physical symbol of undying affection and joint devotion, how about getting your own rock, and doing it together?
Before getting married, you should take a vacation trip together to western Montana. Near Philipsburg, in beautiful mountain scenery, there is a place called Gem Mountain Sapphire where you can pan for sapphires without much physical effort and with a very high chance of success. They dig up the stream sediments for you, run them through a sluice box to get rid of the muddy stuff, and present you with a big box of fine gravel. You pick through the gravel with a pair of tweezers and pick out the good ones, which are really obvious. It’s a very pleasant activity, and the surroundings are just gorgeous. My wife and I have several stones from our two visits, ranging from pale green to ruby red, all of them far larger than anything we could have afforded at a jewelry store.
Not to go all geological on you here, but contrary to the De Beers slogan, diamonds really aren’t forever. They’re combustible. Sapphires really are forever – they’re made of aluminum oxide, one of the most insoluble and heat-resistant materials known, and only a little bit softer than diamond. Even if the flame of passion fades, and even if real flames claim your house, these stones will survive.
Another did the same thing at “one of those tourist-trap mines that are all over the Georgia/North Carolina border.” Another reader:
Four years ago, I gave my then-partner a ring I had purchased in Provincetown in 1975. I had never removed it from my finger until then. But it was a few months later that I proposed. We sort of thought of that ring as an “engagement” ring.
We were going to get married in Connecticut – he lived in Oklahoma, I in Florida – several months later, but I got a job offer that meant a move to Las Vegas, thwarting that plan (although it did mean he could join me). Work and busyness meant postponing again – to this past August in San Francisco – but then, again, “stuff” got in the way and we had to cancel, losing our money for the license and ceremony we paid up front.
In October, I made new license and ceremony appointments and paid the fees again. We had once found rings online that we both quite liked, but finances didn’t allow their purchase. As this was turning out to be a rather low-budget affair (a good friend was giving us a hotel room for three nights and we were driving to the city from Vegas), I found discount online jeweler and selected only rings on their clearance page. We chose $12 titanium rings which you can see in the picture below, taken in front of San Francisco’s City Hall moments after we were married on December 24, just three weeks ago.
I don’t care one whit about the value of the ring. As a 55-year-old man who grew up never thinking of marriage as ever being a possibility, our $12 rings are priceless.
It will be interesting, however, to see how this evolves, whether younger gay men and women who can imagine marriage for themselves try to fit into the “established” norms of engagement and wedding rings (and other marriage traditions), or if new paths will be forged.
The Dish 