• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Neighborgoods

Get Outside and Enjoy Life

  • Home
  • About
  • Lifestyle
  • Health
  • Traveling
  • Finances
  • Activities
  • Community
  • Pets
  • Business
  • Blog
  • Contact

Engagement Rings

July 29, 2019 by Carter Leave a Comment

Once upon a time, in Ancient Rome (at least according to the American Gem Society, anyway), wives walked about the city wearing the very first key rings on their fingers. Why? To show that they belonged to, and were the property of their husbands. Fast forward hundreds of years to 1477 when Archduke Maximillian of Austria decided it was time to do something more akin to commemoration and celebration of the act and wonder that is engagement. Thus he commissioned the very first diamond engagement ring to be crafted for his bride to be, Mary of Burgundy, and with his ‘putting a ring on it,’ sparked an overwhelming desire by European aristocrats and nobility to also have fashioned such opulent rings to seal the engagement pact. Thus, the diamond engagement ring was born.

What we now know and visually understand to be the classic diamond engagement ring, of course, was created through American advertising in the 1940s. Archduke Maximillian’s design of his fiance’s engagement ring was quite different. As were all those European clones that followed. Rather than what we know as the band, setting, and stone of today’s more modern engagement rings, the Archduke set a trend for mixing diamonds with other gems, stones, and enamel, giving birth to something that we now know to be ‘estate jewellery.’

Some engagement rings are manufactured to be paired with a particular wedding ring. Quite a lot of estate jewellery pieces are, in fact, made for the engagement ring to fit inside the outside ring setting, which is the wedding band, forming a single and unified piece of jewellery once the bride and groom exchange vows. Some wedding bands are exactly that: nothing more than an elegant band sans gems or stones of any kind, and selected for its coordination with the more stylized or bejewelled engagement ring. Some engagement rings barely have any setting at all, and instead have the stones inlaid into the band itself. This has become the style of most wedding rings today, but more and more people, either for function or cost, are choosing to be more reserved in their style of engagement ring.

But the engagement ring is ever-changing. Today, as you read this, there is a trend beginning to grow wherein men wear engagement rings of their own, thus signalling not just the woman’s ‘reserved’ status, but also the man’s. Heteronormativitly speaking, of course.

When my nephew announced his engagement via social media with he and his fiance flashing their ring-adorned ring fingers, we all went wide-eyed, mostly because we thought they’d just gone ahead and eloped. Just that one extra ring alone had most of the family’s Insta accounts all abuzz with the idea that with a snap of the fingers, we’d skipped over the engagement and gone straight to the ‘I Do’s.’ Then my nephew had to do some educating, and thus, for me at least, the male (or dual-partner) engagement ring was born.

I think that so long as each individual couple keeps evolving, changing, growing, and learning from everyone else, there will always be an evolution in what it means to be engaged, and what, exactly, necessitates, constitutes, or comprises an engagement ring.

 

Filed Under: Blog

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About

Neighborgoods is all about living a healthy and community based lifestyle. Staying active and being outdoors is what life is all about :) It may not be for everyone, but I believe that the more time we spend with others being active outdoors, the happier we are.

Newsletter

Let’s Connect

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Facebook

Neighborgoods

Featured Posts

Choosing the Right Online Rummy Platform: Key Tips for a Safe and Enjoyable Gaming Experience

In the years online rummy has become extremely popular allowing players to enjoy this traditional card game without leaving their homes. However, as there are now a lot of rummy platforms available … [Read More...] about Choosing the Right Online Rummy Platform: Key Tips for a Safe and Enjoyable Gaming Experience

Why to play rummy online?

Mobile gaming has transformed how we enjoy and participate in classic card games like Rummy. Thanks to technological innovation, Rummy has now taken its place among digital entertainment. "Rummy … [Read More...] about Why to play rummy online?

Footer

About

Neighborgoods is all about living a healthy and community based lifestyle. Staying active and being outdoors is what life is all about :) It may not be for everyone, but I believe that the more time we spend with others being active outdoors, the happier we are.

Latest Post

  • Choosing the Right Online Rummy Platform: Key Tips for a Safe and Enjoyable Gaming Experience
  • Why to play rummy online?
  • Why should we focus on playing Rummy online?
  • How Native Plant Gardening Heals You and the Earth
  • The Easy Way Forward Empowering Couples with Uncontested Divorce in Alabama

Facebook

Neighborgoods

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in