Symbols Of Marriage
Round and firm and often fully packed, a western wedding ring can be elegantly simple, simply elegant or as far out of place as snoring at the symphony. It seems we are now entering a phase of the elegantly simple. "Esthetically speaking, we both preferred simple western wedding ring. So large rocks were out from the start. But our careers also were a consideration," says Kurt Westerberg, a teacher of music composition and theory at De Paul University.
"A wide western wedding ring wouldn't work for me because my fingers need to be flexible when I play piano. And Anne couldn't risk a wedding ring snagging her cello strings," Westerberg says. The trim, polished, yellow-gold bands that Westerberg and Anne Mattern, both musicians, chose for their August marriage were hammered slightly by Evanston's Peggie Robinson Designs to glisten in the light. But the unadorned style hardly is designed to shout. Such simplicity in wedding bands apparently is showing up at altars with increasing frequency. More men are wearing wedding rings, but more career women are dispensing with them. And even as sapphires and emeralds show signs of challenging the dominance of diamonds, there is mounting evidence that the old look of simplicity is catching on again. "Our wedding ring business went up by almost 30 percent last year, and most of it was in the area of plain gold wedding bands," says Henry Goldsmith, national merchandise manager of fine jewelry at Montgomery Ward, one of the nation's largest ring retailers. Other jewelry sources sound a similar refrain, though several suggested that interest in that unpretentious symbol of marriage never has faded. "It has been my experience that the classic gold wedding band has been, and always will be, the most popular choice among our customers. It is not affected by fashion trends that influence other jewelry designs. It ages gracefully," said Sidney Garber, of Sidney Garber Jewelers, 840 N. Michigan Ave. The trend to plain gold bands comes despite an aggressive advertising campaign by diamond interests to pooh-pooh anything priced at less than two months of a fiance's salary. The industry message is echoed repeatedly by advice columnists in teen glamor magazines who recommend "one or two months' salary" for an engagement ring as "appropriate." "I see a lot of women my age wearing rings with stones. But I notice more men and women in their 30s who are newly married wearing the plain bands," says Anne Westerberg, who is 23 and does not own an engagement ring. "Personally, it amazes me that so much money is spent on a wedding ring." |