I'm sure you're not unfamiliar with the signaling aspect of diamonds: a costly gesture and sign of commitment, since it can't easily be repeated to other mates, or done at all if one doesn't have the wealth / position / etc. And the signaling utility of diamonds is helped, rather than hindered, by the lack of a secondary market.
If your mate actively doesn't want the signal, then what's the point of signaling?
I mean, mine would scream bloody murder if I gave her a $2000 diamond next week. Hardly worth it, huh?
For our wedding, we went with a nice ring that has two modestly-sized Tanzanite hearts in a silver ring. It costs a mere fraction of what a diamond would have cost, has better symbolism than a single diamond, and, oh, it also looks nice. Frankly I think fully transparent gems lack personality. Only downside I was worried about is that Tanzanite is quite a ways down the Moh scale, but it has not proved a problem; if your gemstone is getting scratched your finger is probably getting torn off. This does not happen often.
I don't know about your experience with women, and by all means, if this is not true, kuddos to you, but this seems like one of those things women would say but feel something competely different.
Geez, way to generalise about an entire gender, and quite negatively at that. There are certainly people (both men and women) who say one thing and mean another, but comments like this do nothing but undermine those women who actually mean it when they say something (like "let's not spend too much money on our rings"), which I have to assume is most of the ones that bother to say stuff like that in the first place.
Yeah. Very important if your wife-to-be is "waiting for marriage" to maintain their market value, and you want to use the ring as a way to get the benefits of marriage before the ceremony.
A big splurge on a ring means that you are serious, and will go through with the ceremony. Breaking off the engagement will leave you out of pocket.
But most people aren't in that position any more. Girls don't "wait-for-marriage" to maintain their market value any more.
> Breaking off the engagement will leave you out of pocket.
Depending on the state, if an engagement is broken off for any reason, the ring should return to you. In others -- only if it's broken off by your betrothed.
If you're in New York, you have to return the ring. Recently, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania stuck steadfastly to the no-fault reasoning and decreed that the donor should always get the ring back if the engagement is broken off, regardless of who broke it off or why (Lindh v. Surman, 1999 WL 1073639). Iowa, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Wisconsin have the same rule (Heiman v. Parrish, 942 P.2d 631, 636 [Kan. 1997]). The alternative rule, and still the majority approach, is that a donor who breaks off the engagement for a reason that has nothing to do with the donee's behavior cannot recover the ring. This is the fault-based rule
