Since the holiday season, the expected plethora of couples has taken the next step in their respective relationships by getting engaged. In the age of social media, pictures of rings and men on bent knees have recently dominated newsfeeds.
With these posts have come a multitude of other, hugely viral, posts defending more low-budget engagement rings, that essentially saying that price of an engagement ring does not matter.
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I believe that if a couple does not want to save up for an engagement ring, that that is their prerogative and that NO ONE should ever shame them for their decision.
While I do not, under any circumstances, believe that it is okay to make rude or degrading comments to any newly engaged couple regarding their ring (or lack thereof), I personally have an unpopular preference, amongst my fellow millennials—I do not want a "cheap" engagement ring.
I do not want a nice ring because I am materialistic or selfish, rather, I simply wish for a ring, that for as little as just over a hundred dollars, shows that my fiancé put thought and effort into the monumental decision to ask me to be his partner for the rest of our lives.
There are couple reasons for this, the first of which concerning financial responsibility. While being financially stable is not a requirement for my future life partner upon agreeing to commit to them, by the time that they propose, I hope that they at least know how to manage money, as this will almost certainly help to avoid conflict later down the road when paying taxes, buying a house, and budgeting out groceries all come into play.
I am not, by any means, saying that I want a wealthy husband or even an "expensive" ring. But by buying an engagement ring that he has to save up, my future fiancé would demonstrate that he has the skills to handle finances.
However, although finances are important, they are simultaneously arbitrary. The most important thing, of course, is that the man that one becomes engaged to is committed to spending the rest of their life with them.
And while many people use this argument in order to justify inexpensive rings, I would argue the opposite. A man that loves you enough to spend the rest of their life with you should be thinking through that decision—realizing the gravity of marriage and the level of commitment that it ideally entails. If a man thinks this through and has no doubt, then he should have no problem taking the time to save up a little bit of money, whether for him that is a couple hundred dollars, or a million, in order to purchase a symbol of this extreme level of commitment.
While I know, despite repeating this, that this opinion is bound to get negative comments, allow me to repeat—this article is not to shame anyone who has a less expensive engagement ring. If that is for you, that is genuinely great.
While we may have differing opinions on this subject matter, I absolutely wish any happily engaged couple nothing but the best.
But I'm sick of seeing posts that essentially call girls who simply want a classic ring from a jeweler materialistic and selfish. I personally don't care if my future ring costs $150 or $15,000. However, I do care to know that my fiancé took the time to think about the gravity of his decision to marry me and displayed this level of commitment by saving up.
To me, this is an act that shows both the responsibility and maturity most often required for a successful marriage, as well as being an act of love.
