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Comment by beevai142 | Hacker News Reader

Given that the diamond ring fad apparently originated from a marketing campaign, it would be interesting to see how well the belief that wedding rings should have a diamond correlates with where the ads were run.

At least in the nordics, I don't think there's a specific type of wedding (EDIT: or engagement) ring that you're expected to have, and I think many people have no stone of any kind embedded in theirs.

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In Netherland, stones are rare. A plain gold band is the traditional wedding ring. If engagement rings are a thing at all, they're generally the wedding ring worn on the other hand, I think.

Tattoos are up and coming. My wife and I (both from good Christian homes) have a Moebius strip tattooed on the inside of our wrist, as wedding tattoo. My sister and her husband have a self-designed rune on their ring finger, and a heart-shaped celtic knot on their lower arm as engagement tattoo (and I think these are their only tattoos; they certainly are for my wife and I).

My wife and I did have engagement rings: titatium with gold. I lost mine before the wedding, though. I can't lose my tattoo.

De Beers clearly never had much influence here.

It's the engagement ring that traditionally has a stone, not the wedding band, which is often just a pure metal (in the US), though many have small stones around the ring.

In Nordic countries, the order is reversed. We wear simple bands after the engagement, and give the fancier ring during the wedding.

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