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Comment by jakewins | Hacker News Reader

Wife and I had read the Atlantic article before it was too late, went with plain wedding bands for both of us. However, living in America, this is causing issues for her, continuously having to explain to friends and acquaintances why she does not have a diamond.

We'd been looking for used rings as an alternative - hence, thank you very much for writing this, you just saved me and my wife several thousand dollars.

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> having to explain to friends and acquaintances why she does not have a diamond.

I don't think this is a universal "in America" thing. Maybe in some parts of the country, but here in the northeast it seems like it's none of their business; I can't imagine asking someone to explain it, and I would think someone who did ask was being awfully nosy. FWIW my wife has a diamond ring which she almost never wears, and I can't remember anyone ever asking about it. My parents wear plain gold wedding bands only, and I've never heard anyone ask them about it either.

That's absolutely fair, I should know better than to generalize like that. We live in rural Missouri, which is probably why the social pressure is what it is.

Sorry about Trump, BTW.

My wife and I, living in the SF Bay area and having no regard for convention whatsoever -- and not really liking diamonds -- went with a sapphire for her ring. She tells me that other women do sometimes ask her about it. This is unfathomable to me, but there it is.

same area; we went with ruby. they ask her about her ring all the time... though she reports never feeling judged.

Fuck, my wife and I are in possession of my parents gold (+small diamond) band and rings and wore them during our courtroom marriage ceremony - but we switched to tungsten rings with a carbon fiber inlay because the gold was too fragile and the wife kept scratching everything (including our daughter) with the diamond.

We're much happier with $20 disposable rings (both of us have lost one already); no fear of loss or damage and it gets the point across fine- hell, when I proposed to her I didn't even have a ring, we would have done it this way in the first place.

> WIW my wife has a diamond ring which she almost never wears, and I can't remember anyone ever asking about it

Interesting, I'm from Europe and I'd be curious to know at which point exactly did diamond rings replace gold wedding bands as the "official marriage signs" in the States. Wedding bands are still quite popular over here in Europe, hopefully they don't get replaced any time soon (for one thing, gold actually has some intrinsic value compared to diamonds).

> at which point exactly did diamond rings replace gold wedding bands as the "official marriage signs" in the States.

They didn't. Wedding bands are still the "official marriage sign". Diamond engagement rings are extremely common, however, and it's very common for American women to continue wearing their engagement ring alongside their wedding band.

(As with my wife and my mother, it's definitely not unheard of for women to wear just the wedding band either).

That tradition is news to me. As far as I knew, the tradition is to give a ring with a stone (commonly diamond) for engagement, and then a plain band for the wedding. Once married, only the plain band is worn.

The reason: stones can snag on clothing, rip an eyeball, snap off, attract violence, or scratch something you care about.

I went with my birthstone (Arizona Peridot, cheap and pretty) from my grandma for the engagement. My wife thought that was sweet. She keeps it in a drawer somewhere as a memento, and wears a plain gold band every day.

I suppose I might prefer titanium over gold, for weight reasons, but the gold is OK.

I've never heard of your tradition before, where are you from?

My mom was born around 1951 in San Francisco to parents raised there and in the central valley. My dad was born around 1946 in San Mateo to parents from Iowa and I forget. The ancestry is Catholic from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and similar.

The engagement ring is fancy. The wedding band is plain. The wedding band is always worn. The engagement ring could be worn, but that is optional. My mom wore hers often enough that it and the wedding band ground each other away and eventually had to be soldered together. So you don't have to always keep the engagement ring in a box, but you might, and wearing it is totally optional. The wedding ring pretty much never comes off.

My (now ex) wife wanted a titanium ring. She loved it because it was so light and felt like it wasn't even there.

That's one thing out of that marriage that didn't cost me much... (Actually, it was a very amicable divorce; marrying someone who isn't a selfish person fixated on superficial stuff like diamond rings is, I think, a good way to make sure that if the marriage does have to end, that it'll be as painless a transition as possible.)

Is this really a thing in the US? In Italy (and AFAIK in most of Europe) wedding rings are normally plain gold (rarely white or red gold, or platinum) bands. Engagement rings do have a stone, but they are not worn every day.

and AFAIK in most of Europe

In Sweden at least it seems to be quite common to wear both rings. However it also seems to be more common to have inset stones, rather than one that sticks out. I've also seen several people who buy the engagement ring and wedding band together as a matching set to make sure they work together. (something which to me always felt rather presumptuous)

What is more presumptuous than getting married?

Fair point.

It was that way in the US for a very long time. Sometime in the last couple decades a new trend arose to wear both the engagement ring and a wedding band together. The logic being you spent 4-5 figures on beautiful jewelry, so it's silly to only wear it during the engagement. (Whether it's silly to spend that much in the first place is another argument.) I don't know if they are in fashion currently, but many jewelers began selling engagement rings with a paired wedding band that is designed to match perfectly and be fused with the engagement ring after the wedding.

> The logic being you spent 4-5 figures on beautiful jewelry

Good lord, people do this? People spend ten thousand dollars on a ring? Fuck. When we got engaged, we shopped together and I bought her a black opal ring. Diamond was never on the menu, so I never even looked at their prices. I knew diamonds were expensive, but I had no idea the extent to which people were getting suckered.

> Good lord, people do this? People spend ten thousand dollars on a ring?

No, of course not - why would you think that? Those 'high priced' rings are like the wax fruit in a greengrocer, or plastic lobsters at the fishmongers - just there for show...!

Back in the real world, people can actually spend hundreds of thousands, even millions, on jewelry.

There was a big ad campaign from the diamond cartel to make everyone believe that 3 months of (gross) salary was the standard amount to pay for an engagement ring. That means if you only make $36K/year, you still shell out $9K for a ring. I don't know how many bought into it, but it likely did raise the average amount paid by anchoring the price so high. "That's crazy! Maybe half that..."

It's pretty much always been the case that a married woman would wear both her engagement and wedding ring? There's even long-standing etiquette about the order in which they should be placed on the finger - engagement first, I believe? It certainly isn't something new since the 1990s.

The correct response for when someone asks your wife why she doesn't have shiny carbon on her ring is, "because fuck you, that's why."

I had no idea that this could possibly be a thing.

Why not just not tell people that it isn't a diamond? Noone is going to notice, and it doesn't really matter that it is a lie.

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