He Liked It, So He Put a Ring On It
Did you know that we wear engagement/wedding rings on the ring finger because the Romans believed that the vena amoris (the vein of love) was directly connected to the heart? Neither did I, but it’s a cute theory. I also found out that Russians wear their engagement/wedding rings on their right hand, posing a cultural dilemma, and that in some countries, brides wear the engagement ring on one hand and the wedding ring on the other, which is just confusing.
My relationship with Paul, from “hello” up until the engagement, has been far from traditional (explained in the first article here) but not having an engagement ring was not an option. And even though we are having a non-traditional and very credit-crunched wedding, I knew I wanted a classic round cut solitaire (which is a single gem in case you don’t know). If it looks obviously like an engagement ring, it’s much easier to fend off sleazy squaddies in clubs. Two birds with one stone!
Despite the intention of only spending about £100 on the ring, jewellery websites broke me as soon as I spotted a half-carat white gold platinum beauty for the price of a small country. Paul began getting wrinkles, losing his appetite and resigning to doing 12-hour shifts at work for the rest of his life. And yes, he let me pick one because after all, I’m the one that will be wearing it.
Luckily for him, several things reversed my carat craving. These were:
- A huge rock on the finger of a 21-year-old who lives in jeans and wifebeaters (the vest tops, not the scumbags) would look like costume jewellery and also very Russian (Russian girls are beautiful but some unfortunately look quite tacky)
- Buying an expensive ring would totally go against the idea of having a small-budget wedding
- Buying an expensive ring would probably mean doing so on a payment plan and after my unfortunate experience with credit/store cards (i.e. maxing them out within a week), I am hugely against buying anything on credit, especially for our wedding as it would mean starting out new life together in debt
- The size of the diamond is not proportional to how much Paul loves me
There were a few others but these were the main ones. In the end, we didn’t scour independent jewellers like planned, we went to a High Street store and bought a small but classy white gold ring that didn’t cost the earth and was sufficiently sparkly to qualify as a girl’s best friend. Alright, so it wasn’t quirky and I’m fairly sure loads of other brides-to-be have it, but it’s cute, it’s classy and I love it.
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