The traditional engagement has always consisted of a man proposing marriage to a woman, offering her an engagement ring, and she either accepts or not. If she accepts, she wears the ring and the man walks around with no jewelry to identify him as ‘taken’. Over the past several years, some European men have been wearing engagement rings, and the trend is slowly making its way into the United States.
Now, as engagements sometimes last a few years, more women want their future husbands to be marked as engaged, and men themselves want to show that they are going to be married. Some brides-to-be think of it as sexist and unfair that they show that they are engaged, while men appear single until the day of the wedding itself. So the trend began. Now women are buying engagement rings for men, too.
In January, British jeweler H. Samuel released a men’s engagement ring, consisting of a titanium band embedded with a small diamond. Gillette’s Jewelers in Australia offers 16 different styles of engagement rings for men on their website. Even high-end jewelers like Novori are creating engagement rings just for men. In the US, couples either custom-design engagement rings, or pick simple bands that can, ultimately, be connected to their wedding rings. Men’s wedding sets are even being made by forward-thinking jewelers.
The pricing for men’s engagement rings is similar to women’s engagement rings. While the rings tend to have less showy diamonds, they make up for it in the weight of the metal chosen. Men traditionally wear much thicker bands, so a diamond set into a thick platinum band can cost as much a larger diamond set into a more delicate women’s ring. A man’s ring is also more likely to be custom-made, as American jewelers are slower to embrace the trend. A custom piece is going to be more expensive than a pre-made ring. Even if the ring doesn’t contain a diamond, having it hand-carved or engraved with a specific message, as women like to do with a man’s engagement ring, it can become an expensive piece of jewelry.
This trend is ever-growing, becoming more and more common worldwide. Now, many men are embracing the idea of wearing engagement rings, and many women are happy to see the playing field becoming more level.
