No ring

So I've been thinking about it, and I think that when we decide to get married, it'd be nice to not have an engagement ring at all. Why not just have a discussion and mutually make the decision together?

• I hate that girls all use engagement rings to "size up" your boyfriend. I don't want to hold out my hand for them to evaluate him. I don't need their evaluation, thanks. And it's not how expensive of a ring he gets me that will make him a good husband. I always hated holding out my hand for people to look at my engagement ring. It felt so shallow! So if I say "we don't have engagement rings, we just decided to get married, that's all", there's no show-and-tell.
  
• I'm not sure about wearing two rings on one finger. I like the simplicity (and practicality!) of just one thin wedding band.
• Then again, I also wouldn't want my engagement ring to "become" my wedding band on my wedding day, because it wouldn't feel special to just take off a ring I've already been wearing a few weeks/months (hopefully not very long at all - no way I'm spending a whole year, or more, planning a wedding!) and then put it right back on.
• Why should I have one and not him? Why do I suddenly have to project my "status" to the world and not him? (If I was to wear an engagement ring, I think I'd like him to wear one too. But then what does he do with that ring after the wedding?)
  
• I like the idea of eschewing tradition.
• And quite simply, I don't need the "status symbol". And I don't need him to buy me a ring to prove how much he loves me.

Why do girls want engagement rings? Well, it's probably a tradition that dates back to when girls were "promised" to men at a very young age. The ring is a "promise" that the man will marry you during the (sometimes long) engagement period.

And it's true most girls like to receive jewellery. (Who doesn't like to receive something pretty/that makes them feel pretty as a gift? Who doesn't like to receive gifts, period?)

Obviously if MB picked out a ring for me as a gift, not because he felt he had to, but because he wanted to, I would be extremely happy! It's a nice symbol in that sense.

I'm looking forward to us picking out simple wedding bands together - the rings we'll wear every day for the rest of our lives. Those rings will be the most special ones because of their meaning (which is more pure than the meaning of an engagement ring, in my opinion!).

Having someone spend (a lot of) money on you can make you feel loved, it's true. But it's sad that girls need a diamond ring as a symbol, as a proof of their "worth". Ugh! I think I'm worth more than any shiny rock!

Then again, I can see how if your significant other used all his money to buy himself toys and things, you would feel like he didn't care about you. (In my case, I definitely don't feel that way!)

[EDIT]

Yes!! I found someone who thinks just like me and has put it very eloquently: The Dratted Engagement Ring

"Not having an engagement ring allows me to opt out of sexist notions of a man as provider and women as passive ornament, and the sexist custom that publicly marks a woman as having been purchased and thus 'off the market' while requiring no such public statement of relational or sexual non-availability by her male partner.

Not having an engagement ring prevents [my fiancé] from having to display his masculinity and creditworthiness for scrutiny and comment by whoever happens to sit next to me on the train."

Yet another comment on a blog post about getting engaged:

"I’ve always been disturbed by the British (and, now I know, USA) habit of “proposing” to someone. First, I can’t see why one should wait for a proposal. If one starts going out with someone, I guess that future plans are a normal topic for discussion and I can’t figure out how one could avoid it until the proposal is made. Second, it looks like a relic from an older world, one in which women were always willing to marry and men were not, and proposing was a way to impress a woman and to show her how much you care for her (so much that you could even be ready to abandon your dear ‘freedom’). Does it still make sense, nowadays? Can it be the beginning of an “inter pares” relationship?"

More articles on the tradition of engagement rings:

Women Should Buy Their Own Engagement Ring

Diamonds are a Girl's Worst Friend: The Trouble with Engagement Rings (Slate)
(wow, check out the links that point out "the crassest of stereotypes")

Whose Engagement Ring Tradition Is This Anyway?