The Cost Mounts Up
The notion that big bucks in western wedding supply are mandatory plays to a well-known guilt-ridden facet of human nature. No one wants to look cheap. So weddings, like funerals, are occasions when celebrants and mourners are vunerable to costly declarations of caring. Money nonetheless enters the equation, even for such couples as the Westerbergs, who also were influenced by keys and strings. A gold band priced at $100 a decade ago now may cost $400. "We used to call them motel rings, but not anymore," says one jeweler. Diamonds, meanwhile, have actually fallen in value.
The standard for gold wedding bands in western wedding supply is 14-karat gold in the United States (with 24-karat being pure gold). That means more alloy and less gold than in European bands, which usually are 18-karat gold, but it also is supposed to mean a ring more resistant to scratching. "Fourteen karats was established for 'hardworking' Americans involve din western wedding supply. But 18 karats is the standard around the world," says Peggie Robinson. There are those who say a wedding ring signifies a union that is meant to be unbroken. Anthropologically speaking, wedding rings have more primitive origins, dating back to days when village custom dictated marriage by conquest. A ring was attached to the ankle or knee of a captive girl or woman from a neighboring tribe to keep her from escaping. "It generally is accepted that wedding rings symbolized possession of a person, like a slave. But there were rings long before wedding rings arrived, and they usually symbolized eternity--that the bond would last forever. It's difficult to determine which ring symbol--slavery or eternity--was more important," observes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a researcher of human symbols and a professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Chicago. "The Meaning of Things", Csikszentmihalyi's scholarly survey into household symbols a few years ago, said that such household objects as furnishings, paintings and jewelry are significant symbols of closeness. Though jewelry ranked only 20th overall (furnishings came first), their symbolic powers are undeniable. "In families that like to be with each other, wedding rings were mentioned more often," he says. "Objects symbolize our relationships to other people. It was apparent in our survey that people who don't have objects tend to be isolated." The evolving style of marriage symbols is not restricted to the new. Prospective newlyweds visit antique stores for Victorian-era bands that come ready-made with history and, sometimes, a better quality of gold. Even so, such rings generally are plain Janes when compared to a lustrous "eternity ring" set with diamonds. |