Imagine you’re taking the next step in your relationship with the one you love, you want to get married, but can’t you afford an engagement ring. This happened to one young couple, and, to make matters worse, they were mocked about it.
At the tender age of 20, Ariel Desiree McRae met her boyfriend online. After speaking together over the phone for hours every day, he drove for over an hour to take her on their first date. Ariel describes their love story; “we ate wings, had a burping contest, and drove around listening to music and singing”. They fell in love on their first date.
Ariel and her boyfriend had never had much. “We scrape and scrape to pay bills and put food in our bellies, but after almost 2 years of dating, we decided that we couldn’t wait anymore, so we didn’t,” McRae wrote in a public Facebook post.
All they wanted was to get married. Ariel didn’t care about a wedding ring with diamonds, or any ring, for that matter. “I just wanted to marry my best friend,” she said. She didn’t need a ring at all, but her fiancée wanted her to have a ring; “He scraped up just enough money to buy me two matching rings from Pandora” she says.
But when Ariel and her husband went into the popular jewellery store chain Pandora to buy the rings, they had a heart-shattering experience.
While they were trying the rings, another salesperson approached them and commented how “pathetic” it was that some men purchase their jewellery as engagement rings.
Ariel described how she watched her new husband’s face fall. Already insecure about not being able to afford one of the pear-shaped engagement rings that covered Ariel’s Pinterest page, her partner was shattered. In the store, he kept asking Ariel if she was okay, desperate to please his soon-to-be wife. Ariel said; “he was so upset at the idea of not making me happy enough and of me not wanting to marry him because my rings didn’t cost enough money or weren’t flashy enough”. He felt like a failure.
Instead of getting angry, Ariel said to the salesperson; “it isn’t the ring that matters, it is the love that goes into buying one that is.” They bought the rings and left the shop.
Her husband was so afraid of her not wanting him because he couldn’t afford a ring that cost thousands of dollars. Ariel was heartbroken that society had put these pressures on her partner.
Ariel and her partner decided that they couldn’t wait any longer, so they eloped and got married with the $130 Pandora wedding ring set. Ariel said; “I’ve never been this happy in my life and I couldn’t imagine spending it with anyone else, ever”.
She took to social media to tell her love story, and express her sadness that society makes people feel that “the only way a man can truly love a woman is if he buys her $3,000+ jewellery and makes a public decree of his affection”. She asks; “why do material possessions equate to love?”
It’s great if you’re lucky enough to afford a beautiful engagement ring and a wedding ring, but not all of us are that fortunate. What’s important is that you find your own unique ways to show your love, in your own special way.
True love knows no bounds and doesn’t require expensive jewellery. It’s often easy to lose sight of this fact, but marriage should be about the love between two people, not the jewellery you have.
Whether you have a temporary engagement ring, shopping on a budget, or buying a ring from Pandora, Ariel’s love story just goes to show that love is love no matter what kind of ring you have.
A Jeweller in Melbourne, Kalfin Jewellery, can help those impacted by COVID-19 or simply cannot afford an engagement ring, with a temporary promise ring in the meantime. We recommend reaching out to Kalfin Jewellery and asking them how they could help and assist you during these times to make one of these love stories come true for you.
Read more articles on Engagement and Marriage at https://jewellerymonthly.co.uk/category/weddings-and-bridal/
