If you are concerned with the price of the traditional engagement ring, and take action in your own relationships, you won't have a feminist marriage. You would have a common sense marriage.

The problem with the tradition engagement ring - at any price, at any salary - from a feminist perspective should be the implied gender roles, the implied differences in attitudes about sex and income.

My advice (never taken yet) to couples is to eschew the fancy ring and the fancy wedding, and use the money for a great honeymoon -- France or Italy, for example.

Thank you for making the case against exorbitant ring purchases. As a feminist man, I've often had my perspective on this issue diminished as simply me 'being cheap', though fortunately not by my wife. Perhaps your words will mark the start of a shift to more responsible engagement purchases or (dare we dream?) a broader recognition that engagement rings are themselves burdened with troublesome symbolic history. Many thanks.

Manufactured diamonds are here,
and orders of magnitude less expensive than mined diamonds.

Also, better looking.
Don't feed DeBeers.

A feminist marriage? Didn't feminists set about destroying marriage because it is an instrument of patriarchal oppression? Isn't the ring a symbol of ownership that should be repudiated?

Marriage these days is a joke anyway. Though I certainly agree that men should stop wasting their money on rings, this is the least of their worries.

The real cost of marriage is when you get taken to the cleaners in the divorce courts. That's when you will wish all you had to worry about was the two months' salary you wasted on a ring.

I made my beloved's wedding ring.

All three of them -- the first two were lost.

I think the third is the best yet! They've all been made out of, well, probably less than a dollar's worth of silver. It does take me a few hours and, with the arthritis in my hands, quite a few tears.

But if it took me an easy ten minutes, I still think we'd both find it cool and very much "us".

One option is to go the route my wife & I took. We have irish wedding bands (claddaghs). Claddaghs have a heart and a crown being held by 2 hands which symbolize love, loyalty and friendship. Pretty cool by itself, but when worn with the top of the crown pointing up your hand it means you're betroved and you turn it the other way when you get married. This is done by both parties.

Not to take the MRA dude seriously, but for years I was quite happy with marriage resistance. In North Carolina at the time we were living there, there was still a marital rape exemption (we did get that taken off, hurrah!).

But years later, health insurance really drove us to get married. (After 18 or so years of unwedded bliss!) It was a lovely ceremony at the courthouse with two mothers, a brother, a friend, and a passel of ducks.

(We had fun with it. We got the license in early December and started calling round, "Is next week good for you to come to our wedding? What day/time?" And the ducks really were awesome. My mother threw trail mix (instead of rice, and the ducks came a running. But the grounds was covered in ice so the kept slipping and falling down...few things are funnier!

It took me years to get comfortable with "husband" and "wife" talk. I still prefer "partner".

I remember using the phrase "spousal equivalent" back in the day...my grandmother found it so confusing!

Call this feminist sentimental, but I still wear the plain ring with the tiny stone my husband gave me 28 years ago, when we were both impoverished graduate students. We both wear plain matching wedding bands that match my ring, and I look at and cherish my ring set frequently. We could easily upgrade our rings now, but neither of us has any interest in doing so, as we have far more interesting things we like to do with our money (like travel). The deBeers' 2 months nonsense is merely a way to guilt-trip young people into lining deBeers' pocketbooks, and definitely should be resisted.

There was a guy called "The Ring Man" who did the artisan round in CA a while back. He made these nifty silver dragon rings with amethysts and garnets. I think they'd make fantastic engagement rings (and I love amethysts and garnets).

Count me in as one of those who would far rather have a less-expensive engagement ring and splash out on the honeymoon. Spending a couple weeks in France, Italy, Tahiti, Hawaii or some other nifty and beautiful place creates the memories that last a lifetime and no-one can take away from you. If someone is going to spend two months' salary on me, I want it to be spent on bonding over Provencal cuisine, quality wine, and beautiful scenery.

Not to mention spending that kind of money on a stone that is not at all rare and doesn't merit the price.

Fizzle, phizzle. Feminism continues to end with a whimper. The Obama administration must have done something particularly stupid or treasonous today to necessitate a pathetic smokescreen like this. Yes, yes, you distracted this particular idiot, but only for a couple minutes mind you. And at least you’re working to destroy the villainous DeBeers monopoly, though it’s hardly nice to do it to those slave drivers right before Passover and all.

An engagement ring doesn't have to be a symbol of patrimony. Its significance is defined within the relationship, not by what DeBeers does or by any historical traditions.

I'll admit, I never would have bought a diamond ring for myself because they're overpriced and useless, and diamond mining wreaks environmental havoc. But I could tell my wife really wanted one, so when we got engaged we went shopping together and got one with a Canadian diamond and recycled gold. I have no doubt we go ripped off, but it was a happy occasion anyway, and it made both of us happy. I can't imagine trying to foist my opinions onto her or convince her she shouldn't want a ring.

If she had wanted to go on a trip to Italy instead of buying a ring, I would have loved it. But trying to push that alternative when what she really wanted was a ring seems to me to be a little paternalistic.

As an analogy, if she was in the mood for an ice cream cone, I could try to convince her that we could save that money and instead buy a bird feeder. I could tell her that the joy she would get from watching the birds would last much longer than the fleeting pleasure of the ice cream. All of that is true, but kind of irrelevant when what she really wants is ice cream. Trying to push her to choose something else would only lead to bad feelings, implying that I know what's best for her better than she does.

So we got an engagement ring. She also bought me a wedding present that she knew would mean a lot to me, although I know she doesn't care for it herself. Marriage is about compromises and taking care of each other even when you don't agree on everything. There are more significant things to worry about than how other people might interpret your gifts to each other.

Here's another way of looking at engagement rings.

Some years ago, some friends of mine, Mike and Maureen, got engaged. Being improverished students, they planned to forego the engagement ring. But Maureen's lawyer father refused to plan a wedding until Mike bought Maureen a ring. He wasn't going to spend a dime unless Mike put some cash down too. So Mike and Maureen found a pretty little ring for $50 or so, a lot of money for them at the time, to satisfy Maureen's father. And they lived happily ever after.