November 28, 2003

diamonds can suck it

So Lauren’s older sister is engaged FINALLY and she has a rock to prove it. No wait, make that a boulder. The thing is huge. If she’s not careful waving her hands she’s going to take out some poor 10 year old boy who’s not paying attention and somehow missed the gigantic sparkly sharp thing swinging from the hand of a woman that weighs about a third of the piece of compressed carbon on her finger.

Anyways. Today I was at a restaurant with Lauren, her engaged sister, and some of her sister’s friends. As we all know, the saying is that “Two Months Salary” is the customary amount that one is supposed to cough up for one of these things. Now, I’ve always had a gut instinct that there’s no way I would ever pay that much for a ring no matter how much it meant to anybody, but at the restaurant today these crazy women were trying to convince me that a wedding ring should be Three months salary. Which is ludicrous. They were absolutely rigid in their belief and wouldn’t budge, implying that I was a horrible cheap thrifty frugal stupid boy for suggesting that there’s no way I would spend three months salary on anything that didn’t have a roof or an engine. Absolutely not gunna doit. So I went online and I found out the real dirt on wedding rings.

First of all it definitely is “Two Months Salary” which was verified by several sources. The interesting little tidbit about this amount is that it came from DeBeers. It was a friggin advertising slogan for the diamond company. It was a subtle slogan, but it went something like “Two months salary never bought so much.” So not only is three months salary completely and utterly bogus, but the two months figure comes from a heinous and manipulative source.

So what the hell do you actually pay? Well, the obvious answer is pay what you can. Figure out what you want and what you can afford. Beyond that I found this site which mentions that three weeks salary or 6% of your annual income is customary. So you gold diggers put your shovels down.

The thing that gets me most riled up about all this diamond business is that diamonds are boring. There are so many other cool gems and stones in the world that would be much more unique than a clear stone. Alexandrite comes to mind, a gem that actually changes color from green in daylight to red in incandescent light.

*It occurred to me in the first third of this post that it’s very possible that I was being messed with and just bought it hook, line, and yes, sinker. While this possibility was very real to me, I decided to go with it as I already had it all outlined in my head.

No Comments

  1. A-Freakin’Men to that, man. (I’m researching the ad slogan, which is how I found you.)

    My engagement/wedding ring was my birthstone–a nice heart-shaped diamond. Net cost in 1990: $65.

    Value of not feeling too guilty when I took it off forever after the divirce in 2000: Priceless.

    Diamands are DULL, DULL, DULL, and furthermore, they’re ridiculously overpriced.

    You also write splendidly. Keep up the good work.

    Comment by Denise B — April 27, 2004 @ 2:18 pm

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