The History Of The Engagement Ring

People are always interested in things like history and finding out more about the history of the engagement ring is always an interesting and “engaging” thing for those who are wedding buffs or for people who are big proponents of honor, ceremony, and history. Finding out as much as you can about the history of the engagement ring before you get married is a pivotal component to making sure that one you are engaged, you will know the true meaning and symbolism behind its existence.

When it comes to the history of design on the modern engagement ring there is not a lot of variance. Typically the materials are either gold, platinum or silver and are mounted with a single diamond. The diamond engagement ring in Western culture was very well popularized by the advertising campaign of de Beers in the 1940’s from whence such sayings as “A diamond is forever” and the thought that you should spend the equivalent to “Two months salary” on your engagement ring were born.

However the history of the engagement ring goes back even further than the 20th century. In fact it can be traced all the way back to the 1200’s and Pope Innocent III’s declaration that there should be a longer waiting period from betrothal and marriage.

While the standard contemporary mount is and has been the Tiffany mount of a single gemstone, there have been other confabulations of stones including one pattern with six stones which represented the birthstones of the two families and their joining together. While this was a popular tradition for a time, it was no doubt predominantly for a class of people who didn’t do a lot of work with their hands, or at all for that matter, and so the six stones on one finger were not nearly the cumbersome load that would be for women in today’s modern world.

In Victorian times there was such thing as the “regards’ ring where the precious gemstones used spelled out the word “regards.” There was also the tradition called “dearest” ring which used the gemstones to the same end.

For more information on the history of the engagement ring or to locate more research on the engagement ring and its long and storied history then you should check out the research that is available online. While there is much written on the subject of the history of the engagement ring the real history will be the one that you and your partner make together as a wedded couple so that one day, hundreds of years from now, people can look back on the modern history we live in and see how people made their own histories.