An Anthropological Look at Engagements

Getting engaged is an event with many cultural symbols, rituals and traditions. I recently got engaged, but I had never really contemplated the cultural forces that guided me through the process…until now. While examining the various rituals associated with proposals and marriage both in other cultures and my own, I realized that a marriage proposal and engagement are culturally rich events. While some cultures trade goods, cattle or other livestock, in the United States, most people use expensive rings of precious metals and jewels to celebrate the occasion.

The process of getting engaged seemed pretty clear cut to me a few months ago, but now I realize that there are innumerable ways to go through with it. I had always assumed that to get engaged, you found the right girl, bought a diamond ring, asked her to marry you, and then she said yes (or no). Now I see that on a global scale, we, in the United States, are a minority with this tradition. I also see that this outline is not always followed. In my own experience, I talked to my potential wife about marriage, lifetime goals, morals and values months before I had even considered proposing. After a while, it just seemed inevitable that we would get married so we decided to get engaged. Together, we decided to ask her father for his blessing, and we did so - together. After earning his stamp of approval, we went and picked out an engagement ring together. It turned out that she did not want the “traditional” diamond engagement ring (due to the conditions in which they are mined), and, as we learned from the sales associate, sapphires, not diamonds, are actually the traditional stones for engagement rings. She ended up choosing a ruby and platinum ring that I gave to her a few days later while kneeling and asking her to be my wife. This scenario fits loosely into the above outline for a “traditional” proposal, but I now see that variation exists both between and within cultures.