It astounds me that men do not purchase insurance on their engagement rings right after they buy them.Insurance for your loose diamond, or diamond engagement ring, should be part of your budget for the ring in the first place; that is how important it is.

You wouldn’t think twice about driving your car without insurance, right, or do you?
Driving a car without insurance is illegal, whereas wearing a diamond ring without insurance is not, this is true.

Can you handle the what if?
I’m not talking about getting pulled over by a cop…I’m talking about protecting your investment!!

In many cases, your car doesn’t even cost as much as as your diamond engagement ring and is not nearly as easy to lose, or have stolen from you!

Your engagement ring is not only sentimental, it is also quite valuable. Now if your ring is less than $3000 this might not be as important to you.

Engagement rings get lost and stolen every single day.
An engagement ring can get lost or stolen just as easily when you are wearing it, as when you are not.

Unfortunately, people get mugged all of the time. People also lose their rings. My wife usually just loses them. Consider, you are at a fancy restaurant and you go to the sink to wash your hands. Many times you will take off the ring while you are washing up. If you would only know how many stories we have heard of ladies who had accidently left their rings behind on the sink counter after washing in a public place, only to return and find the ring lost/stolen.

A car might get lost/stolen when it is left parked in a garage or on the street (higher chance in downtown Miami). However, it is hardly a likely scenario when you are actually driving it.

Not so with an engagement ring, where it is possible for your diamond to pop out of the prongs (given the right knock on a hard surface..etc.) and be lost forever, even as you are wearing it.
An engagement ring is one of the most expensive, sentimental, valuable and memorable items you will ever own.
If you lose it, misplace it, or have it stolen, you and your spouse would be devastated.
In fact, I have (unfortunately) actually seen marriages suffer as a result of such an episode…and especially when there was no insurance coverage on the engagement ring. Happens more often in shallow marriages than marriages based on more than a ring.

This is one of the first things I instruct our clients to do after they purchase a diamond engagement ring from any company.

Purchase INSURANCE!

It is really not that difficult today to secure insurance on a diamond engagement ring.
Many people choose to add the coverage of the ring to their existing home owners insurance policy, as a rider or “addendum” to the plan. Others, choose to purchase a separate and entirely exclusive insurance plan for their jewelry and engagement rings. It is typically cheaper to just add it to your homeowners policy.
Either way, insurance rates today on diamonds and jewelry are very competitive and there are many really good insurance companies offering comprehensive insurance policies to protect your diamond ring investment.
Speak to your insurance broker or agent to find out which policy is right for you. The insurance policy will take into account the purchase or appraised value of your diamond engagement ring and ensure that you have adequate coverage in the event of loss or theft.
To all of you who have already purchased your diamond engagement rings and have procrastinated on getting the ring insured; thikn long and hard about how losing the ring would affect you.

Believe me, my wife knows the feeling of endorphines pumping through you when you first put that beautiful diamond engagement ring on your finger. It all surreal and all you wish to do is stare at that beauty all day long……. some women are just happy that the guy they love has finally gotten around to asking the big question.
The “boring” task of securing insurance for the engagement ring, suddenly becomes the last thing on your mind and you push it to the recesses of your consciousness as just another item on your “to do list”.

This could be a MISTAKE.
If your ring gets lost or stolen…(and it only has to happen once), you wife may blame herself for eternity.
Please take my advice and make this (insurance coverage) your second highest priority after securing your diamond engagement ring.

……..Your first priority is to fall in love with your wife and express appreciation to each other. Don’t forget about this token of your love and make sure you look at insurance when you are buying the ring.  Not after you lose it.

Found an interesting article in the Pakistan Daily Times about engagemnts written by a staff writer this month.  (I wrote my personal comments in parenthesis)

You can tell it’s translated roughly.A bad marriage can be summed up in three stages: an engagement ring, a wedding ring and lots of suffer-ring.

Prominent psychiatrist Prof Dr Sa’ad Malik said this at a lecture titled ‘Marriages: Making and Maintaining them’ at Sukh Chan Wellness Club in Gulberg earlier in the week.

The lecture was to educate attendees on struggles couples have in marriages and ways to resolve them. Dr Malik said making and maintaining a marriage was important for a healthy and happy life and that such holy unions should be taken seriously. He said a lot of thinking is required before two people jump into such a union.

He said marriage was an important phase of an individual’s life and that spouse selection was the most important step towards this phase. He said there were several steps that led to spouse selection, which included

Checking the family backgrounds, (numerous criminal background checks are available online); spending time with candidate’s mother; spending time with other in-laws; studying their values, traditions, thought process and approach to life and other characteristics that would affect a marriage. He said the decision to choose a spouse should be taken with the mind and not the heart. (I believe it doesn’t hurt to hire a private investigator to check on your proposed marriage candidate either if it will be a high profile marriage, better to find out now than let the tabloids expose it.)

He said that once the spouse was selected and marriage solemnised, maintaining it takes twice the effort. He said good understanding, giving space to each other, compromise and care for each other were very important.

He said couples should avoid asking relatives to resolve issues between them. “They should either resolve issues themselves or go to professionals who don’t have a stake in their marriage,” he added.

He said that in the case of a bad marriage, it was advisable to part ways amicably instead of constant suffering for the rest of one’s life hoping for some improvement. He summed up the lecture by saying, “A successful marriage is like falling in love many a time – with the same person!” (A bad marriage is like waking up with glass shards in your eyes every day, either pull the glass out or quit complaining.)

The humble beginnings of engagement and wedding rings are the same. This ring is the most famous and instantly recognizable symbol of the (hopefully perpetual) joining of a man and a woman as husband and wife in the institution of marriage, has a long, wide spread and mysterious history. The earliest uses of these symbols of love are attributed to different peoples, including the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians.

• Betrothal rings were meant to symbolize a woman’s connection to the man who would become her husband, though the arrangement was more of a business proposition than a romantic union.
• Romans used iron rings to symbolize strength and permanence.
• Greeks are currently credited with the initial idea to wear the ring on the 4th finger of the left hand, where the “vena amoris” (translated from Latin it means ”vein of love”) was supposed to connect to the heart.
• The Egyptians saw the circle symbolically and believed this was the symbol of eternity as well as many other ancient cultures. It had no beginning and no end, like time. It returned to itself, like life; and the shape was worshipped in the form of the Sun and the Moon. The hole in the center of the ring is not just space either; it is important in its own right as the symbol of the gateway, or door; leading to things and events both known and unknown.

Catholic influences: 

During the ninth century, Pope Nicolas I endorsed the idea of engagement rings by making a gold ring a betrothal requirement to demonstrate the groom’s wealth and ability to care for a wife. In 1215, Pope Innocent III made a similar declaration though the rings could consist of different metals, including silver and iron, and the rings were meant to be worn during a longer engagement period.

First use of a diamond in an engagement ring 

The first recorded diamond engagement ring was given to Mary of Burgundy by her betrothed, Archduke Maximillian of Austria, in 1477. Few details are known about the ring itself, but diamonds were considered at the time to have magical powers relative to love, purity, and fidelity – the same characteristics they symbolize today.

Starting in 1866, extensive diamond deposits were discovered in Africa, effectively making the gems more widely available and cheaper for the general public to purchase (This began with Erasmus Jacobs found the Eureka (21.25 carats rough) on the banks of the Orange River in Africa). Because of the sudden abundance of diamonds, designs became more elaborate and intricate, and more brides-to-be began to receive diamond engagement rings.

When I got engaged 12 years ago I had no idea what type of ring I was supposed to purchase before I popped the question to my future wife.  I made a quick decision on one of the most important purchases of my life. In 2007 my wife and I went on an Alaskan cruise and I bought her a new wedding band to show how my tastes have changed over the years. This blog is about helping the soon to be groom find that perfect diamond engagement ring for his wife.

I know I wish their had been a blog about this when I started my search years ago.