Ariel McRae and her now husband decided to get married in November of last year, which may not be newsworthy in and of itself for anyone but their friends and family. McRae claims she and her then fiance decided they didn’t want to wait any longer to tie the knot, so they ran down to the county courthouse and did the deed.
However, after a sales clerk derided the inexpensive engagement rings they were purchasing from the Pandora line, she wrote a Facebook post that went viral and may present the most important lesson many of us will ever learn about relationships.
My husband doesn't have a lot, neither of us do. We scrape and scrape to pay bills and put food in our bellies, but…
Posted by Ariel Desiree McRae on Saturday, November 26, 2016
McRae noted that in a marriage, an expensive ring is hardly the important thing. When faced with someone deriding the inexpensive nature of the rings, she says she replied, “It isn’t the ring that matters, it is the love that goes into buying one that matters.”
She has a point.
A 2014 study shows that spending massive amounts on wedding bling doesn’t necessarily correlate to marital bliss, but on the flip side that same study shows those who spend less than $500 on rings don’t fare so well either.
Luckily for McRae and her husband, Quinn, correlation does not equal causation. What matters more is that a couple loves one another deeply and wants to spend the rest of their lives together in a culture that seems to almost revere disposable marriages.
Frankly, buying what one can afford and not taking on stupid debt for what is nothing more than a piece of jewelry makes a lot of sense, especially considering McRae’s comments. My wife and I didn’t spend a lot of money on our wedding rings, either, and we’re coming up on 18 years of matrimony in April, so I’m inclined to believe McRae nailed it.
Maybe if everyone looked at it as being about the love that going into buying a ring, marriages would be much happier places.
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