Your wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life. Whilst pledging undying love and loyalty to one person for the rest of your sorry existence may seem like rather drastic step, when you're in the throes of love, you are quite literally blind to your significant other's faults. At least, that's what the old adage assures us.
In reality, it's a little more complex. We live in an age where not only are people getting married later, but they're divorcing more readily too. Gone is the golden era of monogamy and "till death do us part" mentality that our grandparents celebrated. We're now flooded with options.
Certainly, we no longer need to meet our life partner at work or through a friend, we have the internet at our disposal - and boy, is it a powerful place. Whether you're seeking a life-partner, summer fling or one-night-stand, dating apps such as Tinder, Grindr and Bumble have you covered.
Irrespective of whether or not you believe that the technological revolution has killed all romance, it's evident that some things never change: we all still care too much about the material aspects of getting married. Indeed, thoroughly removed from being a testament of devotion to your betrothed, the engagement ring and wedding dress is more about proving one's status than anything else.
One woman proved this exact sentiment when she took to MumsNet to publicly shame her fiancé for purchasing her a "small" and inexpensive engagement ring.
The anonymous user posted on the parenting forum to ask for advice about how to handle her distress at receiving a ring that she believed just wasn't up to scratch. Despite saying that she was "happy and excited to accept" the proposal, she found her self "disappointed" with her fiancé (who she refers to as DP) and his choice of "a diamond solitaire in white gold". As she so cogently surmises: "the first word that entered my head was small".
Clearly, the engagement ring failed to live up to the woman's high expectations. She continues:
”There’s nothing to dislike about the type of ring per se, as a diamond solitaire would have been my choice, but it’s the whole thing – the colour of the gold, the setting, the small stone and relatively chunky shoulders.”
Whilst I'm not entirely sure what the disgruntled woman means by "chunky shoulders", I can understand why she is disappointed. After all, once married you are expected to wear your wedding ring for the rest of your life, and yeah, it must be pretty unpleasant to look down on something that you can't stand the sight of day after day.
However, people didn't remain so sympathetic for the woman as she then chose to publicise how much, or indeed how little her fiancé decided to splash on the symbolic gesture. And as you can imagine, she didn't believe it was anywhere near close enough to what he
should have spent:
”His salary is nearing a 6 figure sum, and he’s usually very generous. Having seen the receipt I know he paid $1,674 for it – which is a lot less than I would have imagined he would have spent on such a significant piece of jewelry.”
She continued:
"He’ll be more disappointed in me for making a fuss over it when, in his eyes, it fits, and there’s nothing actually wrong with it rather than being disappointed that I’m not truly happy with it."
"Ideally I would have loved for us to have chosen a ring together and made a special day finding one we both liked.
"As it’s something I’ll be wearing every day and is such a special piece of jewelry I wanted to really love it, and I just don’t."
The woman ended her rant with a plea for advice from those who had been in similar situations.
However, the majority of Mumsnet users were quick to condemn the user for her apparent materialism, saying that she was seemed more interested in showing off the ring than she was in him. But regardless of what you think about the woman's motivations, it's clear that there's no easy answer to this conundrum.
If anything, I think that it serves as a timely reiteration of how important it is to have open lines of communication with your significant other, especially when it comes to things that you're expected to cherish forever.
