How an Ad Campaign Invented the Diamond Engagement Ring
When I decided to propose to the woman who is now my wife, I gave a lot of thought to how I was going to do it. But I didn’t think much about what I was going to do it with. Not only did a diamond ring seem the logical—nay, the inevitable—choice, but I had just the very diamond. My grandfather had scrounged up enough money to buy a diamond ring for my grandmother in the early 1950s, and the stone had passed to me when he passed away. I reset the diamond in a more modern band, got the ring appraised, and slipped it on my fiancée’s finger.
It was a beautiful moment—a gesture of love and commitment spanning generations. And it was also exactly what De Beers Consolidated Mines, of American brides wear a diamond engagement ring, which now costs an average of .
