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LordHeini

As a sidenote, the rings with diamonds thing is mostly an American fad.

All people i know in Germany have just plain gold rings.

It is way nicer because it is more a symbol of commitment than a show of wealth.

Those never get out of style, can hardly be damaged and if need be can be replaced cheaply.

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Those are wedding bands. Engagement rings more often feature diamonds or other gems. Wedding bands rarely do indeed (in Western Europe anyway).

I can't speak of Germany but in France engagement rings are very rare and more something of the upper class, out of all the weddings I've done, none of them did that.

I wouldn't say that engagement rings are upper class, but it's true it's only in certain groups. In my peer group, it's common, for example my brother bought one for his fiancée and my mom has one. But in all case they were gifted at the time of the engagement, not at the wedding.

The average engagement ring in France is 800$ (https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2014/09/15/1952013-bagues-f...)

One comment above talked about $5600 for an engagement ring in average in the US.

That is quite a difference indeed!

In France it's the same, it's mostly gold or silver, one example website I found randomly on google:(http://www.histoiredor.com/fr/mariage/alliances/(univers)/ho...).

Even when you search on google with the two languages, you see that difference clearly in the illustrations.

In France, you can have both: an engagement ring (with stones like diamands) and an "alliance" (wedding ring).

Engagement rings are very rare in France, I don't know personally any couple who did it and even the wikipedia page on it is very small, unless you are from the upper class or an international couple, it's pretty rare.

Weird. Friends are getting engaged all around me and the ladies all have an engagement ring. No international couple nor upper class.

Weird.

Strange, maybe you are coming from a big city or something similar? It's very unusual around my place, I only know of one distant cousin who did it and it made people raise some eyebrows because it was judged as posh.

Same in Italy, this diamonds thing is an US anomaly similar to other things like cost of healthcare and so forth.

American, Canadian, and Japanese thing.

Oh, hello from Turkey!

It is way nicer (in my opinion)*

Diamonds are beautiful, and in my opinion much nicer than a boring solid gold ring. Still a scam, but a pretty one!

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