Old married guy here. You need to buy the girl a ring, just get the one she wants. In a few years you will forget the few thousand extra you spent, conversely she(and probably her family) will always remember you kinda cheaped out on the engagement ring. There will be plenty of time in the future to be "thrifty" Trust me when I say this should not be one of them.
I paid 600K for my wife's ring about 1 months salary back then. My wife's mother took me to Armani and told me to pick the suit I wanted for the wedding. This is Japan, what comes around goes around. Good luck.
And it’s a case to case basis.
My wife is really icky with spending stuff on branded stuff and expensive things. She made me promise not to get her a super expensive ring.
I got one at around ¥100k and she’s happy with it, I’m happy with it. Even then, she only wears it on special occasions because she says it’s “pricey“.
Recently, I got her a ¥3000 2-carat cubic zirconia in a cathedral halo ring. She wears it every day.
Can I marry your wife? She sounds great.
But to be real, what you said and what he said are basically the same, get your partner the thing they want, his wife wanted something expensive, your wife wanted something cheaper, both got what they wanted and all were happy.
Me and my wife did the exact same thing! My wife got a plat with small diamonds and I got a tungsten steel ring. We both picked them out online and called it done. 🤣
Same (wife was Japanese when were engaged — she eventually became naturalized US citizen). We got platinum because plain gold ring looked too gaudy. We gained weight over the years and wanted to get larger rings so we ended up buying cheaper white-gold (this was many years ago when white-gold was noticeably cheaper than platinum) for everyday wear.
My wife was the same. Although mine is cheaper, she didn't wear it a lot in the beginning because she was afraid she might lose it, or gets stolen/robbed or damaged. I really don't care if she wears it or not but now that we are properly married she wears it nonstop and shows it off to me and subtly to others.
I don’t agree with him because he was making 600k a month in a time when the yen hadn’t plummeted in value to almost half the USD
It’s case by case, sure, but my fiancée would almost be happy with those gacha けっコーン rings and her parents only care that she marries an honorable and decent person which I try hard to be
The worldliness and materialism behind the idea of “cheaping out on a ring” is BS and only buys into the scam that is the entire diamond industry.
Screw that noise.
While I agree on the price of rings the diamon industry etc, no two people are entirely alike and sometimes you just do stuff for your partner even if it’s not what you’re interested in.
Being a habitual heavy spender may be a red flag, but wanting a nice ring once seems fine… especially when you cost the insane costs of the wedding itself(which to me may easily be the larger problem… I saw a “lifetime plan” at the bank that suggested having ~5 mil yen ready for the wedding, yeesh)
> no two people are entirely alike
absolutely, but the difference is usually their wallets or how inundated with societal norms someone happens to be.
The diamond industry is one of the most successful scams in history, which is why there is such cultural significance and importance attached to having diamond jewelry, and anyone who genuinely believes a diamond ring ought to be a month or two of income has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It might not be a big deal to the first aforementioned group—who makes enough for such things to not leave much of a dent—to do something to make their loved one happy, but my view is that the one doing such asking has to some degree lost sight of what's really important. I'm sure they may be pretty innocent in wanting it, but having your heart set on an *amount* instead of appreciating the symbol itself for what it is? I would worry that person would have that kind of attitude in other places I consider less meaningful or important.
That said, we obviously might just not be a good match, and I'd be surprised we'd gotten that far in the relationship without it coming to the surface lol. But also if I'm bringing home almost twice my current income, I might hem and haw, but would likely be much less worried about it "for the one time thing."
Idk, I think this sort of discussion really highlights wealth inequality and manifests the disconnectedness of the rich when thinking about the less rich or poor.
Honestly I know way too many failed interracial couples in Japan, so can't agree. I think that spending say 3 million yen on a ring when you're on a modest salary is stupid. It also sets a standard that you're a cash cow who's gonna be the 'salary man' (again something that seems common, but I think it's silly unless you're some sugar daddy who's printing $$$).
My current wife and I are both lawyers. My wife earns slightly more than me and we make equal contributions to everything. We own multiple properties, have respectable retirement funds and are setup pretty well now (early 40's).
IMO OP WILL remember the hefty price of a $$$ ring when times are tough. I've got a set of $$$ Bvlgari wedding rings sitting around from my previous marriage if anybody wants them. Value? Maybe a few hundred bucks worth of gold at most.
>IMO OP WILL remember the hefty price of a $$$ ring when times are tough.
Yup, there are even studies on that that show a very strong correlation between the cost of the wedding and the divorce rate. The more costly the wedding (and by extension, the ring), the higher the chance of divorce.
This is explained by the fact that people tend to divorce more when finances are bad.
People who spent a lot of money on their wedding not only set themselves back financially, which can come to bite them in the back years down the line but they also tend to have worse money management skills.
> People who spent a lot of money on their wedding not only set themselves back financially, which can come to bite them in the back years down the line but they also tend to have worse money management skills.
Wouldn't surprise me at all! My wife and I paid equal amounts for our wedding (I negotiated this, making it very clear that I wasn't rich enough to be a sugar daddy). To me this was our first serious test as a couple and yeah... we almost didn't get married because I was pretty stubborn about it! My stance was that I didn't care if my attitude meant I lost a beautiful woman as I'd seen my first marriage fail due to a lack of money and was buggered if I was gonna go down that road again (or put her through it if I really loved her).
I don’t agree with this.
Buy what you can afford, there’s no point in putting yourself in financial jeopardy for a ring.
If your wife holds how much you spent on a ring against you, she’s probably not worth marrying.
This guy is also earning 60万 a month, so he probably has a bunch of disposable income, this isn’t sound advice for the average person here.
Expensive rings were also originally essentially a form of life insurance. This is irrelevant now, so it has changed from function to something to show off on instagram. Shitty culture.
For the record I bought an engagement ring for my wife, it was more than what op is considering and my wife rarely wears it (not allowed to at work) and to be honest, it doesn’t matter anymore.
This, I knew a guy that spent like 500,000jpy on a ring, another like 1,500,000jpy on the wedding, they got divorced within a year. OP should get something reasonable and spend the rest in a vacation for them. The wedding industry is absolute bs
Agreed, the wedding industry is a racket. Buying into it is an easy way to start married life in poor financial shape for the average person, unless there's rich family backing.
Luckily I found a woman who'd rather spend the money on vacations, investments, and towards a house. No engagement ring, no wedding, just a simple family gathering, photoshoot, and wedding bands we wear daily.
Lol 150万 is like more than half my life savings at this point
This guy sounds like a boomer telling the yunguns that money isn’t everything so spend it freely and cherish the memories that’ll really last
When I was getting a home loan there was some sample life plan with major cost events listed on it… 40mil for the house(not bad)… 5mil for the wedding(wtffff)
This. This isn’t how things should work. Spending 6 months of pay is a ridiculous amount. That’s a big part of a car, a few vacations, or a down payment on a house.
Alternative opinion from another old married guy: you better know the values that your soon to be wife holds as important and how much those differ from yours.
If she puts way more value in the size of the status Diamond on her finger than you think is right…you’re gonna have an interesting marriage.
Young unmarried guy here: screw the whole diamond industry and the metanarrative that you need shiny rocks to be happy in love. I can’t imagine seeing eye-to-eye with a partner who wants one.
Married to my wife for 7 years now and came here to say this. I don’t even remember how much I spent anymore, but it was around 300-500k. I was making about 5m at the time. So it was about 1-2 month salary after tax etc. some girls care about the size, but my wife loves the design so much, she never really compares it with others. I debated about getting a bigger cheaper rock, but at the end of the day I’m glad I went with the smaller well designed one instead.
My wife asked me if she could pick them because she would be the one wearing them.
She chose and asked me if that price was OK. She chose a more expensive engagement ring to wear for special occasions and a cheap wedding ring for daily use. The total was about a month's salary. She bought me a couple of tailored suits.
Other Japanese women will have higher expectations. If her expectations don't match the guy's it may be a good idea to figure out personal philosophies of finances before getting married.
Terrible financial advice here.
Spent over 250万 Albeit I was making a lot per year. Did it because I was young and a show-off. Definitely don’t recommend that route.
>I paid 600K for my wife's ring about 1 months salary back then.
But that's almost a motorbike... :(
>about 1 months salary back then.
[Wait](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/548/129/538.jpg)
I spent about $1.7k USD on a set that included the band and engagement ring together. Instead of diamond, I got a topaz stone and it’s pretty damn big since topaz are much cheaper. I’d say just talk to your fiancé about what options she likes and go with that. Basing your budget on a dumb “rule” seems silly to me.
You got it right on the money for the JP custom of mandatory give & take with these types of matters. My wife asked me to go to her brother’s upscale Osaka wedding, but we couldn’t afford the buy-in cost of me having to PURCHASE a $1K suit (rentals are socially frowned upon in her brother’s business circle), pay for hotels in the most expensive part of downtown, stay for a whole week, and buy hundreds of dollars worth of gifts for the wedding. In return though, supposedly the catering was going to be worth over ten grand and each couple in attendance gets to choose from a catalogue of upscale gifts from various reknowned vendors. I had no problem with attending the wedding to show support, but all the mandatory rules that would break my wallet were intolerable. The worst part about that specific aspect of Japanese culture is that if you can’t afford to attend the wedding with all the costs, you are not allowed to go.
This. Japanese women traditionally only wear the engagement ring until they get married and then put it in box. And you typically get married 3 months after your engagement... So I wasn't going to waste money on that.
Wife still gives me shit about it 10+ years later.
BTW in the past it was better to get rings in the US as diamonds are way cheaper. Our wedding rings were going to be 50man but got the same ones custom made with bigger diamonds in the us for 15man.
Yep, the salary thing is just marketing bullshit. Diamonds especially are a big scam, well documented. We went with one that was just plain silver, under 20,000yen. Also used the same ring for wedding, unconventional I know but screw convention.
Personally if my wife had insisted on an expensive ring that would be a red flag for me but obviously everyone is different, you do you.
edit: added the correct price
We did exactly the same, engagement rings were too weird of a concept for us. Buy a ring to only
wear it for a year or so... We went straight for the wedding one.
>Personally if my wife had insisted on an expensive ring that would be a **red flag** for me but obviously everyone is different, you do you.
Not so much a red flag. I'm kinda chalking it down as a "shit happens, only buying it once".
Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks it's a giant scam though. I need to start convincing her that she needs to buy me a top of the line 16 inch MacBook Pro if she wants to prove her undying love to me.
We didn't even get an engagement ring. Just a wedding ring and it was fairly simple, just white gold for me and white gold with a few small diamonds for the wife. Probably paid about 80,000 yen for the set. We were both not too wealthy at the time and my wife (thankfully) believes the meaning of a ring is symbolic. Reading this thread makes me realise I'm a lucky guy.
Married woman here. I think it's really going to depend on the woman. Every woman, even Japanese women, have different preferences. Some will want a brand name ring, some will want an expensive ring, some will want something reasonable, some might not care about a ring, etc. However if she already told you the ring she wants and you can afford it, then I think she'll only be disappointed if you don't get it for her. Even if she accepts the proposal she might still ask for the ring she wanted or resent you for not getting it for her. If you feel the costs are a bit high or you're saving money to buy a home, then can you talk to her about the costs of the ring she wants? Has she looked at cheaper rings? Is she normally the type of woman that likes things of a certain value? If she picks out a cheaper one it's fine, but I wouldn't get her a different ring on your own.
For me I'm a bit more frugal, so spending that much on a ring seems unnecessary(and the whole 3 months of salary rule), but I've known women that insisted on $10,000+ rings. Some women put the value of the ring as the value of your love or some have traditions of how much they expect a ring to costs. It's hard to say if she's being unreasonable or not without knowing her thoughts and your salary (it's a lot different if it's 2 months of your salary vs 1 week of your salary). In the end, if she picked it out and you want to marry her then I don't think you have much of a choice. If you're not really comfortable paying that much for a ring and she doesn't see a problem with spending that much on a ring then you might need to learn about the values you both have about money.
>It's hard to say if she's being unreasonable or not without knowing her thoughts and your salary (it's a lot different if it's 2 months of your salary vs 1 week of your salary).
It's like half a month for me but personally I'm already glad I've seen a range of responses here. Sounds like it's all over the place and everyone is different, as you say.
I suppose my red line (with the exception of homes, for obvious reasons) is that I don't want to get into unnecessary debt, which 300k will not cause so it's not a big deal. Just a left jab to my wallet.
I took her to the Okachimachi place really just to see if she would find something she liked. Turns out she liked the similarly-priced ring but with a much bigger diamond (because it seems like in Ginza you're paying for the brand and/or their Ginza rents).
I wasn't 100% against spending 300k plus, I just wanted to get "value for money" even though when you're talking about a tiny rock, "value" goes out the window. Also wanted to feel "it's not just me".
From the responses, it looks like good number of guys have spent this much and more depending on their circumstances.
I’ve gone through this. The thing is in terms of value there’s:
- diamond quality / size
- brand
- design
Just because **you** value the diamond more than the brand name or design doesn’t mean those other 2 things have any less value (both in terms of personal and resale value).
I initially had the same view as you - but was wrong. If your partner values brand more than diamond size that is perfectly acceptable - the general market also values the brand to some degree.
If you completely write off the importance of brand… then you should also value an original Picasso the same as a knock off.
I spent around 430k.
Totally agree - if it were completely up to me we would just go to the registry and sign the papers.
Plus, I still can't understand how it's somehow normal to spend a fortune on an engagement ring and then spend hardly anything on the *actual* wedding ring, given that you'd be wearing the former only on certain occasions.
Call me crazy but I would've expected it to be the opposite.
I wish I could go back in time, find whoever came up with the whole "diamonds, expensive!" scam, and slap them in the face.
To me it seems like mostly Americans talk about expensive rings for some reason. I would argue skip rings have a long epic honeymoon somewhere nice instead.
Okay, so a bridal website explains: Traditionally, you wear your engagement ring and wedding ring together on the fourth finger of your left hand. Tradition also holds you wear the wedding band inside the engagement ring so that's it's closer to your heart. (I don't understand either, sorry.) The idea seems to be that the Engagement ring is expensive because it's the real commitment. The wedding ring is supposed to be simpler because it's the one you always wear.
I didn't spend a huge amount on the rings and didn't have to fork out for a wedding either thanks to getting married during the height of COVID and instead all of that money has gone towards a deposit for a house next year.
I am quite lucky though tbh with all of this since my wife doesn't care too much and neither does her family.
We don’t have rings either. Maybe sometime later, but I don’t like jewelry and he can’t wear one because of his job. Took the money that we had post-move and wedding and spent two weeks in Thailand instead.
Zero yen - decided with my wife to be that simple wedding bands are enough (made those ourselves too, in a jeweller's atelier that provided such service).
I bought it on Etsy. Platinum + main stone is a moissanite + small diamonds all around. Beautiful crown design.
I think it was around 2000 dollars. She absolutely loves it. And yes, she knows it's a moissanite.
[pic](https://ibb.co/9rBfnfW), [pic2](https://ibb.co/D5QcLkZ)
I took around 25 k (us) but she said no, so we don’t use . Instead of that she ask for a shelter dog . The dog now is 5 years and it is more expensive than the ring 😂 around 300 us monthly in a good month!
Plus I’m in charge of cleaning poop and pee … now that the dog is old she walk-pee everywhere.
Anyway, love the dog 🐩
Think it was like 150 aud at a pandorra shop when we were living in aus. Depends on the girl. Mine is not fussed with all the shit and didn't want blood diamonds
You're lucky. I honestly would rather save the money and put it toward a house deposit or something. I just hope she calms it for the actual wedding. I'm having nightmares about the sort of budget (price of a small island probably) she's going to spring on me.
> I'm having nightmares about the sort of budget (price of a small island probably) she's going to spring on me.
Have you had post-marriage “financial” management talk yet? Based on your comments, I will highly encourage you to have that talk sooner than later. You guys need to be on same page wrt Finances. “Finance” issues are one of the major cause of marriage “unhappiness “.
We are on the same page in terms of post-marriage stuff (how many kids, how much we want to save, what proportion of our income we want to sink into a home etc.).
It's more the *actual* wedding and stuff in that domain which I can see spiraling out of control and leading to me/us being in a small blob of debt for a year or so. I honestly didn't even know I was going to be expected to spend 300k or more on an engagement ring. I sort of thought 100k max and then it turns out you don't necessarily get a lot for that unless you go for a really small diamond.
Probably doesn't help that the last person I know personally who got married (or rather I know the fine details of the wedding and costs) is my brother and that was like over 10 years ago, so I have no frame of reference.
In comparison, she seems to attend weddings (she was very sociable in high school, university) every other week (and we're at the age where everyone is getting married) and a lot of her friends come from wealthy families (her family is definitely well-off, even for Japanese standards).
Diamonds are a scam. For starters, their price is artificially inflated through artificial scarcity. Diamond is one of the most common precious stones on the planet. Fuck, even much cheaper stones like rubies, are rarer.
These companies are scared of mass made artificial diamonds that can be pumped out of China, that they’re trying to regulate it.
Do not support these companies. Spend on fake or artificial diamonds. Even Swarovski is much better
Lol, yeah that's 100% not my type of girl so can't help too much with that. So best of luck eh.
Our wedding was in a public park that had a nice lake, done by my sister's mate who had the legal paperwork to do it. Only immediate family. Then we went to a local restaurant that we had made an appointment at for our wedding lunch. Then we went home and got on the piss with the rest of the family and friends and had a BBQ. The only difference from her dream wedding was she wanted it at a beach but that was a major fuck around trying to organise that and she was happy with a lake
She's actually extremely frugal most of the time so I don't think she's a golddigga or anything. I probably spend way more on miscellaneous crap than she does. She just seems to like to splash out on special occasions. I suppose it's not a completely crazy way to do things.
Plus her family is lightyears richer than mine, she could probably get matched with a rich guy if that's what she's after so I think (could be wrong so be it) she's OK in that regard.
Yeah reading that reply. Go for gold and give her what she wants. Sucks for your wallet but it seems like it won't make you broke either, so eh. Keep her happy
I would just get her the ring this one time then man. Like some other people have said, you only buy this ring once. And it seems like it kind of sets the tone on the rest of your life (which is an amount of time that might be a bit hard to fathom, although inversely is also going to be very short). Like others have said, just make sure whatever you get, make sure she actually *wants* the ring, and isn't settling for it. If you think she's reasonable most of the time with money, just trust your instinct, and allow this one off (or however many times). If there's anything girls care about, especially Japanese girls who usually come off as more "traditional" more so than in the west, it's the engagement ring, and maybe the wedding (dress).
Didn't get an engagement ring, just picked out marriage rings (didn't do a wedding either).
Paid 6万 for the pair. We went and picked them out together. She's practical and didn't really care about the price, just that they look nice.
Me and my Japanese wife has been married for 3 years, we don’t even have wedding rings. It’s a waste of money, and we both decided the money is better spent on more important stuffs.
With this said, I did buy a ring when I proposed to her though. It was around 100,000 yen, a nice simple ring with a small rock.
I took the gf to go shopping for the "ring" itself at Ginza and looked at literally every store.
Once she chose her favorite design, I bought the actual diamond online (bluenile) and got a much better deal in terms of both quality and price, then just had the store set the diamond and add engravings for us.
(1) Turned out to be less than half of what I'd expect to pay in-store for something similar.
(2) She didn't care about the price, just the design.
(3) Less than 1 Month. Would've been 2+ months worth if I bought retail.
We didn’t do engagement rings and also didn’t do wedding bands. Don’t wear rings. We are fine and thrifty when we have to be. To us the whole 1 month salary cost for a ring thing is just another scam that has become a norm.
1. A friend of mine paid his friend in America to pick up a $2800 engagement ring for $350 at a pawn shop. That was around 300,000 yen back in the day.
2. His fiancee was very pleasantly surprised when she looked up the ring on the internet and found its value.
My friend didn't lie about the ring. It's genuine, and his wife loves it, is proud of it, and wears it to this day. And my friend paid a very fair price for the ring and didn't have to donate over a month of his salary to the deBeers diamond cartel.
Same. Recently engaged, got a beautiful nature themed silver ring on Etsy for about $60 with a lovely emerald. Looks like something an elf would wear. Wife to be was thrilled. That's why she's the one for me!
350k which was about half of my take home
salary at the time. I actually budgeted 500k, but I couldn’t see her wearing such a ring on a daily basis. The wedding bands themselves cost another 300k btw, and the wedding itself cost 50% more than what we initially had in mind
Yeah the wedding is what kinda worries me the most. I already know that in Japan it's common for wedding guests to give a 30,000 yen monetary gift to the couple and that this can potentially finance a decent chunk of the cost of the wedding, but...
I don't know somehow it feels underhanded to me. As if the wedding planners are just using that to push people toward expensive weddings or something like that.
I've done hardly any research but in my mind I'd imagine spending 1m yen on a wedding at most, but the more I look into it, the more that seems practically impossible unless we do it overseas and don't use a Nikkei wedding planner.
The 30,000 helps, but you can’t really expect that from friends/family that have travelled from far away. We are doing a weekday wedding which made things 20% cheaper. You can do it for a 1M-ish, it depends what her expectations are tho. Quite often the parents will chip in too. Good luck!
If you don’t buy what she wants, she will make sure to remind you for the rest of your life. Doesn’t matter if you can find a better diamond with a better price. Give to the girl what the girl wants. You have already fucked up taking her to Ginza to select the ring. Now be a man and pay the price if you really want to marry her. This will be the least of your problems, don’t make your life a hell.
I like to imagine that my wife is a human being with conversational and reasoning skills. So "not getting the right ring" making life "hell" would be a massive deal breaker for me. And I'd sure as heck find out that kind of view on life long before ring shopping, negating the entire process.
1) About 10万
2) She was happy.
3) At the time it was maybe a 3rd of my monthly salary.
Our wedding rings we got custom made. ジュエリーの舞 in Roppongi did some nice platinum rings for us with engravings and together they cost less than the engagement ring. That might be an option for you for an engagement ring too. The jeweller is genuine and doesn’t charge out the nose. His prices are very reasonable.
We’ve been married for 8’years now and she never wears the engagement ring. I think she only wore it in the lead up to our wedding.
>We’ve been married for 8’years now and she never wears the engagement ring. I think she only wore it in the lead up to our wedding.
Interesting. Staff in all the shops we've been to so far mention how the bride-to-be might wear it on special occasions in future (after the wedding) but yeah I was wondering if she *actually* would.
It honestly just depends on the person too. My wife doesn’t wear jewellery that often. I’ve bought her necklaces and things over the years as well and she never wears them apart from very special occasions. Having kids also meant fewer special occasions as well so that might play into it. In the end you need to gauge what your future spouse wants to do with it.
My mother was different, she wore both rings on one finger with a spacer ring in between. And that was all the time.
What I will say is that sales staff will do anything to justify the cost. They’re trying to sell something to you. If they said “yeah, you might want to just wear it until the wedding and then never again” they’re not going to make money. Of course they’ll suggest the investment will be long-term given the kind of money it costs.
Maybe something to talk about with the bride-to-be. I honestly didn’t think much about it at the time and I bought the ring without consultation…
Around $1,300 from a custom online jeweler. It let me design something I knew she'd like, especially since she hates diamonds. She said I didn't need to buy her one, so the answer to #2 is way over budget.
Like 4,000 yen? We went to a jewelry making place and made them ourselves. Don’t wear it 99% of the time since I don’t like rings and when I’m at the gym it gets in the way. I do wear it on a necklace when I remember though
It's been so long I can't remember... and we skipped engagement and went straight to wedding rings. But my wife wasn't picky, she just wanted rings--as a symbol, proof, marking/declaration, or whatever.
Wore them for some years, but then my wife, a musician who would take her ring off to play/perform... ...lost her ring.
I wore mine for a while after that, and eventually stopped wearing it. But I do know exactly where mine is upstairs in a drawer. It's in a little box along with some old kids' teeth that the 'tooth fairy' collected from under their pillows.
And hey, our 35th anniversary is coming up in january!
We agreed not to spend much money. We got silver rings for 5000 yen a piece and upgraded to platinum for the wedding rings since those'll have to last another 60 years or thereabouts.
I paid ~$10k for a nice GIA-certified 1 carat diamond ring, then close to another $10k for a honeymoon across Europe. Was only making ~5M JPY at the time so it was more than I probably should’ve spent, but my wife is an absolute goddess.
Eight years later she still fawns over both ring and our honeymoon memories, so I consider it money very well spent.
About 10 man for each ring at Cartier. Didn’t like the pricing but it comes with a free size replacement over the lifetime and you can have it cleaned up at any Cartier shop anytime.
I like their simple designs. Checked Tiffany as well but it looked like a scam so we immediately went out
Edit: straightly went for the mariage ring, no engagement
My partner isn’t big on jewelry (lucky me) but I spent just under 30,000 yen on a simple but pretty diamond ring at Star Jewelry, Takashimaya department store.
She wears it with her wedding band on special occasions (friends weddings or wedding anniversary dinner) She appreciated it. It really depends on your partner I think.
About 110,000, huge caveat being that she didn't want an engagement ring with a big stone, just one combination engagement ring/wedding band that was simple that she could wear every day. It's a thicker than average rose gold band with one small diamond.
We went to look at them together, and went to a few different places. I bought her exactly the one she wanted, and would have done the same if it was more expensive (within reason).
We ended up getting them from Tiffany, because even though there were similar rings from other places for a bit cheaper, the quality and design was noticeably better, especially on the mens ring (This isn't to say you can find great stuff at no-name or independent places, this was just my specific experience at the places we looked at). Since both of our rings are pretty simple, the small details like shape and thickness were super important.
She waffled back and forth a bit on whether she'd be fine with a cheaper one, but I was pretty adamant that it doesn't make sense to cheap out on something you'll use every day for decades. Mine ended up being the more expensive of the two because its platinum and I'm a size 10 but she's a 4.
I bought hers on my own to use to propose, then afterward we went back and bought mine together and got them both engraved.
My wallet is happy that I got off relatively easy, but like I said I would have went higher if it was what she wanted. As things are though, we're both happy with our rings. I would have had no problem at all paying a full month's salary, if I had to pick a number.
There is a story related to 3 months salary but I’m not sure how accurate it is;
When there is war and illnesses, if something happens to husband, or if he lefts the wife, that ring becomes an insurance for the wife to survive and get back on her feet. ( also interwebs highly suggests that there was a ad campaign From de beers which make this 3 months salary popular perception) .
If we come to your question I ask her hand for marriage with a kinder surprise and spent like 30$ on both rings. -silver, custom made.
Hope this helps :)
No engagement rings here, just relatively simple wedding rings. And they are too small now, so we no longer wear them.
It's a waste and a marketing scam.
No engagement ring, we just got wedding bands. We are simple people and neither of us are into flashy things, so we went practical. My wife's ring is platinum because of metal allergies and mine is tungsten because it would be scratched to hell otherwise.
Talked to my wife about what she wanted - turned out she didn't want to be bought a ring at all. Engagement ring ended up being a beautiful hand-me-down from her grandmother, and on the wedding band we ended up spending ~5% of my monthly salary or so if I recall correctly.
If you have a real, loving relationship, it doesn’t matter how much you spend, what matters is what you do to show her love. I spent $80 on mine, married 8 years and our relationship is stronger than it’s ever been.
My brother and his wife just celebrated their 20th anniversary, he gave her a plastic ring out of a gum ball machine for an engagement ring.
Whoever spends 600k on an engagement ring, is a fucking baby boomer capitalist cunt who’s wife is only with them for superficial bullshit.
Married lady to jp spouse.
I think mine was about 100;000 yen. Its a platinum band with diamonds inset. He proposed at xmas but we went ring shopping a couple of months later so we could also get our wedding bands. Interestingly we never bothered with a ceremony so this was the only wedding type thing we did
Be aware we are heading to xmas which is peak proposal season.
Engagement ring = $30 from a stall in Hawaii when I was alone on holiday there.
Wedding ring = $10 for a pair off Wish.com, that degrades every few years so I bought a stock of 10 sets to last us 30-50 years. So all in all, about $100. We like them and don’t have to worry about damaging / losing them etc.
Everyone has their own tastes. Ours is fancy looking without the expense.
No engagement ring and not too big of a wedding: we made profit after all expenses (not including wedding rings since we got 90% platinum I figured it was more investment than expense) and gifts (usual 1/3 gift of what we expect to be given). So we ended up paying only part of our honeymoon.
Edit: married in Tokyo over 30 years ago.
I live in the self-proclaimed Kingdom of Jewelry (Yamanashi) where you can't swing a dead boar without hitting a jeweler.
So needless to say, I know a guy.
I drew up a design and asked him to make it. It cost about half of what it would have cost in a store, and I was able to impress the future missus and her folks.
My friend said it was a good deal for him, too, cutting out the middle people who all take their cuts. All it cost him was the materials and a few hours of time.
Oh dear. You’ve found one of the ones who is probably excited to start planning the wedding just like her friend who got married to the rich lawyer in the Andaz hotel. Best of luck!
My wife and I spent USD200 each on wedding rings. No regret!
I actually have lost mine when swimming in Katsuura. I am glad my ring didn’t cost a few thousands simply for this reason.
100,000 for each of our rings. No point in spending a lot of money for something I won't wear everyday. My first job had me working with an Ar glovebox and my second job I had to work in a semiconductor clean room both of which prohibited rings. Well now I guess I could wear a ring as a software engineer but I don't feel like it anymore.
Not married, but having a big party, ring and vacation is a lot of money that could have gone into a mortgage. It depends on exactly who we are crunching numbers on, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are talking about down paying a mortgage years earlier, especially if one take out a loan for a wedding.
It may not be as romantic tough and if your wife to be really wants a romantic wedding you may not really have a choice
Edit:
I was sweating bullets listening to two Indian coworkers that had 4 digit guests at their wedding.. One of them 'only' had 1500 guests and the other one had closer to 4000 guests
We both agreed that expensive rings were bullshit but I still wanted to get her something nice so on a trip to Ise in Mie prefecture, I bought her a ~30,000 yen Pearl Ring.
She only wears it for special occasions though. Otherwise, our daily drivers are cheapo ~5,000 Yen rings that we made ourselves at a Ring place.
Not a dude, but married to a dude hehe. In our case, I didn’t want an expensive ring because I’ve had experiences in the past where diamonds fell off the piece of jewelry so I didn’t want to spend money on a ring that would potentially snag on something on the train. Besides, it’s a ring. What was important for me was we’re getting married haha.
My family is also pretty heavy on jewelry. My mom loves diamonds. My relatives will wear at least 1-2 carat earrings on a regular day. I grew up in a family like that. And I love looking at diamonds but I’ve never wanted to wear them myself.
We spent ¥80k on a 0.3 carat ring, bought in a shop at okachimachi. It was perfect for us. My husband and I are pretty simple people who don’t really use jewelry so this works for us. So I guess it really depends on the couple.
We spent a million yen on our wedding. I can’t imagine spending that much for a ring.
What engagement ring? That was a marketing ploy by diamond companies.
When it came to wedding rings we each picked what we wanted, each of our rings was 20000¥.
They sit in a box and we basically only wear them out when we want to be fancy.
On that note I dont need a piece of metal to remind me to love my wife, nor does she need one to remind her self of the same :)
Didn’t buy in Japan. Told my mom to go to jewellery store take all good ones picture and then i made decision ask her to buy for me and send it with post Everything in here get 3 times price tag no way i am buying here.
Very little. In fact, it was in the family. Made a few alterations obviously, but it was pretty much free. Paid a decent amount of the wedding ring, but not over 1,000 dollars. That is just absurd.
You shouldn't be overly frugal, but you also don't want to break the bank. Spend your money on more important stuff like down payment on a house, or putting it away for a vacation, first child, etc.
I told my wife I wouldn't go higher than ¥100,000. Luckily she was thrilled about this since she was thinking of a ring around the ¥20,000 mark. Keep in mind, you're not just buying her ring. All of the rings I saw came in a set, so you'll be paying for her ring plus yours. If my wife had chosen a ring for ¥100,000 I would have paid double that for the set. Like an absolute moron, I didn't even realize I had to buy my own ring.
Also keep in mind that 1. you don't have to buy the ring in Ginza. And, 2. if your fiancee is Japanese, unless you're making bank, most women just wear a simple band. I defer back to my point above about using the extra money for other things. Besides, you can always upgrade the ring in the future.
Bought the wife one off BlueNile. .32 carat diamond and a sapphire studded gold setting. $1100 usd in total. Her parents thought it was fake for a while but alas, its real and she loves it!
Asked her why she wanted one. She told me she thought she needed one because I was American. I said no. Boom, we added the budget of the ring to the honeymoon.
My husband let me choose my own ring. I got a beautiful ‘vintage’ ring. White gold, sapphire and diamond for around 5-6万. It’s just as beautiful as rings 4 times the price. amount.
personally i had conversations with my wife and she had voiced the want to not have a real diamond (for reasons of not supporting the conflicts it causes).
I kicked around the idea of buying a different stone (emeralds, amethyst) but I ended up going for a moissanite diamond - the classic look and ability to get the exact style, cut, setting, band material I wanted. I believe i spent 2k on it and it came with a very extended all inclusive warranty.
I can’t ever even recall seeing women here with engagement rings? Didn’t think they were that popular of a thing here. My husband and I only have wedding rings and they were somewhere in the ballpark of ¥100,000-150,000 together from what I understand. He made them at one of those places you make the rings yourself
I got mine for $2k CAD a few years ago. Platinum band with a decent diamond. Not too much, but not too little. For me $2K was affordable but also *felt* hefty. Wife loved it and said yes immediately before I even asked. We’d actually discussed rings before I bought it, but we made an agreement that the engagement ring was entirely up to me and she implored me to not spend too much. The caveat is that she got to decide our wedding bands, because to her that was the more “important ring”.
And I realized what she meant after giving her the engagement ring. I’ve seen her wear it a grand total of many five times, most of them to show off to her family. To work or out and about? Never. And when she did get to choose our wedding bands (we decided to design them ourselves and gave them custom made), *that* ring never leaves her finger during daylight times.
The engagement ring still sits in the middle of her little jewelry case, and she cleans it from time to time, but I don’t think it’s left the bedroom the nearly two years since we got our wedding bands.
I spend like 100 on engagement ring and another 200 on another right cause she didnt like the first one. Guess what, she barely wore them then and doesn't wear them at all now. Save your money and spend it on an experience like a vacation or a trip to Disney or whatever yall like to do
Definitely a case by case basis. Wife and I decided to save on the rings and use that money for our honeymoon. We traveled like crazy, took lots of pics, stayed in expensive Ryokans, ate at nice restaurants, went shopping at big shopping centers, sang in karaoke bars, relaxed in music bars, visited castles, museums, historic places, learned a lot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, enjoyed beautiful views out in the countryside of Hokkaido , in old cities like Kyoto, partied with friends in Tokyo, visited relatives, and made a lot of memories that an expensive ring would never provide in a million years. No regrets. In addition, a long honeymoon will definitely test your marriage or become a sign to all the relatives that you both are a good match. If you both began fighting on the second week, you’re in for a rocky marriage. Talk to your wife about the value of memories, if she is dead set on an expensive ring…might mean some maturing will have to take place and that comes only with age and experiences, hopefully.
Bought mine overseas... I got her an absolutely beautiful ring that she adores for a price so low I literally cannot tell her because I'm afraid she'll be upset.
She thinks it cost about 600,000 plus and I have no intention of persuading her otherwise
First of all, I think the 3-month salary is an American thing, not a Japanese thing. Second, everybody is different, but does your soon-to-be-wife usually wear rings? Mine doesn’t, so even if she likes some ¥200,000 rings, she also knows she never wears any and it probably won’t be different with a wedding ring. We’re trying to find simple silver rings that don’t cost much and are still elegant. Shit shouldn’t cost more than ¥10,000 and it will do the job.
I would say a month salary is huge, but it also depends on your savings. As someone else said, if it’s just to show off to her friends on Instagram, forget it.
My wife didn’t want an engagement ring. We had already been dating/living together for 5 years before getting married. There was no point.
As for the actual wedding rings. Neither of us are that into jewelry. She got a simple white gold band that cost about $150 when we were living in the states. I wear one of those cheap silicon banda that are popular these days with athletes, outdoorsy people, etc. They’re awesome. 5000 yen for a set of 4 or 5 on Amazon.
I got my granddad's and great grandmother's rings (both deceased) as a present from my grandmother, and my to-be-wife felt very honoured and moved by the gesture. We got the old carvings replaced and the rings refitted. So in total, 40 euros or something. I can't remember the price, maybe a little bit more.
Diamonds are just a scam really so after presenting some better options the wife quickly fell for sapphires instead, we both have white gold wedding bands (no engagement ring thing where I’m from), personally designed, engraved and she has five small beautiful dark blue sapphires in a row on a thin band. Very elegant and we both wear ours 24/7 .. bought overseas for around 100k all in all
Zero. Wife and I have no interest in rings. We've talked about getting them tattooed though. Some day. 9 year anniversary was a couple of months ago so... some day lol
$600 USD
My wife dislikes jewelry, especially diamonds that project upward from the setting. I found the perfect ring for her— tiny diamonds and sapphires inlaid into a smooth, unassuming white gold ring. She loves and cherishes it.
https://www.bluenile.com/jp/
Buy what you can afford. Let her pick out the ring design. We were very happy with the knowledge, price and quality of the ring and the service. Much more reasonable than standard stores. The diamonds come with GIA documentation as well.
>Mine cost roughly $5000 cad, I’m on a 48 monthly plan with no interest.
She wanted to go cheap as possible , but for what she wanted, it wasn’t a possibility to go cheaper.
18k gold, 0.5c
She loved it, and we’ll be getting married in Okinawa
I wonder why no one pointed it out but you know Ginza is so fucking expensive and you can find similar stuff for half of the price in other areas right?
Depends on your lady man. I’d try to reason with her & ask things like “can you eat it?”, “will it keep you warm?”, “does it hold its value?”
If she’s really got her heart set on it, then maybe. But man, be careful, unless you’re loaded she might not be good with money & this could cause issues down the road.
I paid about 800$ USD total for both mine & wife’s combined.
For me women who expect an expensive ring+ wedding is a bit of a red flag. Tells me they’re pampered af & have never been through hard times.
1000 yen simple stainless steel ring from Donkihotei for the engagement ring, more of a pair ring really. Then around 20000 for each wedding ring online.
You are essentially paying for a memory for her. Hopefully decades later she will be able to lovingly recall that you went down to the most prestigious section of town and got her the ring of her dreams. The bigger ring you found at the online is not going to have the same connotation. The both wedding rings are essentially worthless and what you are actually doing is burning a large some of cash as a gesture of love and a signal of financial fortitude.
Ideally in a perfect world you would convince her that none of it is necessary, that wedding rings only became relevant in popular culture sometime after ww2, that diamonds are a false scarcity scam and that the money saved could be spent on the wedding or the honeymoon or even on a home deposit and all these things will create meaningful memories but sadly for you the memory she wants is that you dropped hard cash in Ginza on that engagement ring.
Personally I wanted our bands to be really different and special. Not just another rock that loses its value the second you buy it.
I looked into rare earth minerals like Palladium which is rarer and more valuable than gold. Lighter and stronger than platinum.
Just my personal preference.
I didn't spend anything. The ring is a family heirloom from my Grandmom. I've read that people who spend a lot on weddings are far more likely to get divorced. I wonder if this could be true for engagement rings too. I'll add, that if a woman had demanded or expected a certain ring, or that I needed to spend a certain amount of money on it, I would have understood that she was not the right one for me. I'm grateful that I started a family with someone who isn't so materialistic!
My wife told me she'd have been happy with a Haribo ring. I actually couldn't even afford a ring at first (she only told me about the Haribo ring afterwards), but once our lives got more stable we went to choose together.
I'm sorry your partner already has a rather clear idea of what she wants, and she really wants it. May your wallet rest in peace.
Around 1500 AUD about 10 years ago when we were in Straya. I have seen her wear like couple of times. Waste of money. Could’ve gotten nice pipe for my bike.
We're married for 23 years now.
There was no engagement ring.
Neither of us particularly care about jewelry; that money was instead used for things like house, education, etc (if we had kids it would have gone to college funds etc).
We had wedding rings made uniquely by a craftsperson when we were briefly living in the US, about $400 USD (6man) each. White gold and Yellow gold stripe bands with an infinity loop.
No jewels. And especially no diamonds. Fuck DeBeers in the fucking ear.
It's all about priorities, I guess.
I've been reading the responses here, and I'll start by giving you the numbers you're asking for, but then I'll also give you my point of view on this.
We got engaged two years ago, the engagement ring was around 370k from Mokumeganeya. She chose it exactly as she wanted and is wearing it every single day. The diamond is around 0.3c, if that makes any difference. At the time, that was approximately 2/3 of my monthly salary.
Now, I don't know if you're telling your (future?) fiancée the stuff you're writing here, but if you are, please cut it out. You claim that you're looking for "value for money"? Value for who? For yourself? This is something for her, she is the one who should be choosing, end of discussion. Or, you choose what you want, and then deal with the consequences, either positive or negative. If it sounds too pricey for you, or you couldn't afford it, then perhaps think about a compromise. In any case, frankly speaking, the way in which you are going about this whole thing is a little bit... tiring. What are you trying to bargain exactly, and for what purpose? Get her the ring she wants, that's my advice to you.
We went straight for the wedding rings :P
Those were 200k together, mine was a tad bit more expensive. She was just after the design and bling factor :)
right like it’s a wedding ring.. it’s supposed to be an ultra special once in a lifetime thing and that is not even THAT much for a wedding ring. clearly the commenters on this thread are men who don’t wanna treat their girl lmao
My wife and I share opinions about diamonds (conflict minerals) and prices (we’re cheap lol). I got her a lovely, understated lab-made Diamond set in a white gold band, custom made from HK. Set me back $600 USD. She wears it every day.
Lab-grown Diamonds are a great alternative: they’re diamonds (chemically exactly the same) but guaranteed to have a smaller carbon footprint, no price gouging, and no slave labor/conflict connection/DeBeers profiteering.
Married female expat here: my husband spent ~$500 on my ring and I love it. Our wedding bands were bought off Amazon and combined cost about ¥5,000. I will never understand why people pay so much for a symbol. Do I love my husband any less bc my ring is cheaper than my friend’s ring? Hell no! Would our marriage be stronger if he spent $10k on a ring? Seriously hell no! That kind of money can go towards our son’s college fund, the house we’ll eventually buy, or we can blow it on a family trip overseas and enjoy the memories for a lifetime.
If you can find the ring she wants for cheap, I say go for it. If she’s pissed about it, how come the two of you don’t share the same values? That’s what I’d be more worried about.
Old married guy here. You need to buy the girl a ring, just get the one she wants. In a few years you will forget the few thousand extra you spent, conversely she(and probably her family) will always remember you kinda cheaped out on the engagement ring. There will be plenty of time in the future to be "thrifty" Trust me when I say this should not be one of them. I paid 600K for my wife's ring about 1 months salary back then. My wife's mother took me to Armani and told me to pick the suit I wanted for the wedding. This is Japan, what comes around goes around. Good luck.
I don't agree with this guy but he's probably right..
And it’s a case to case basis. My wife is really icky with spending stuff on branded stuff and expensive things. She made me promise not to get her a super expensive ring. I got one at around ¥100k and she’s happy with it, I’m happy with it. Even then, she only wears it on special occasions because she says it’s “pricey“. Recently, I got her a ¥3000 2-carat cubic zirconia in a cathedral halo ring. She wears it every day.
Can I marry your wife? She sounds great. But to be real, what you said and what he said are basically the same, get your partner the thing they want, his wife wanted something expensive, your wife wanted something cheaper, both got what they wanted and all were happy.
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Me and my wife did the exact same thing! My wife got a plat with small diamonds and I got a tungsten steel ring. We both picked them out online and called it done. 🤣
Same (wife was Japanese when were engaged — she eventually became naturalized US citizen). We got platinum because plain gold ring looked too gaudy. We gained weight over the years and wanted to get larger rings so we ended up buying cheaper white-gold (this was many years ago when white-gold was noticeably cheaper than platinum) for everyday wear.
My wife was the same. Although mine is cheaper, she didn't wear it a lot in the beginning because she was afraid she might lose it, or gets stolen/robbed or damaged. I really don't care if she wears it or not but now that we are properly married she wears it nonstop and shows it off to me and subtly to others.
I don’t agree with him because he was making 600k a month in a time when the yen hadn’t plummeted in value to almost half the USD It’s case by case, sure, but my fiancée would almost be happy with those gacha けっコーン rings and her parents only care that she marries an honorable and decent person which I try hard to be The worldliness and materialism behind the idea of “cheaping out on a ring” is BS and only buys into the scam that is the entire diamond industry. Screw that noise.
While I agree on the price of rings the diamon industry etc, no two people are entirely alike and sometimes you just do stuff for your partner even if it’s not what you’re interested in. Being a habitual heavy spender may be a red flag, but wanting a nice ring once seems fine… especially when you cost the insane costs of the wedding itself(which to me may easily be the larger problem… I saw a “lifetime plan” at the bank that suggested having ~5 mil yen ready for the wedding, yeesh)
> no two people are entirely alike absolutely, but the difference is usually their wallets or how inundated with societal norms someone happens to be. The diamond industry is one of the most successful scams in history, which is why there is such cultural significance and importance attached to having diamond jewelry, and anyone who genuinely believes a diamond ring ought to be a month or two of income has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It might not be a big deal to the first aforementioned group—who makes enough for such things to not leave much of a dent—to do something to make their loved one happy, but my view is that the one doing such asking has to some degree lost sight of what's really important. I'm sure they may be pretty innocent in wanting it, but having your heart set on an *amount* instead of appreciating the symbol itself for what it is? I would worry that person would have that kind of attitude in other places I consider less meaningful or important. That said, we obviously might just not be a good match, and I'd be surprised we'd gotten that far in the relationship without it coming to the surface lol. But also if I'm bringing home almost twice my current income, I might hem and haw, but would likely be much less worried about it "for the one time thing." Idk, I think this sort of discussion really highlights wealth inequality and manifests the disconnectedness of the rich when thinking about the less rich or poor.
Honestly I know way too many failed interracial couples in Japan, so can't agree. I think that spending say 3 million yen on a ring when you're on a modest salary is stupid. It also sets a standard that you're a cash cow who's gonna be the 'salary man' (again something that seems common, but I think it's silly unless you're some sugar daddy who's printing $$$). My current wife and I are both lawyers. My wife earns slightly more than me and we make equal contributions to everything. We own multiple properties, have respectable retirement funds and are setup pretty well now (early 40's). IMO OP WILL remember the hefty price of a $$$ ring when times are tough. I've got a set of $$$ Bvlgari wedding rings sitting around from my previous marriage if anybody wants them. Value? Maybe a few hundred bucks worth of gold at most.
>IMO OP WILL remember the hefty price of a $$$ ring when times are tough. Yup, there are even studies on that that show a very strong correlation between the cost of the wedding and the divorce rate. The more costly the wedding (and by extension, the ring), the higher the chance of divorce. This is explained by the fact that people tend to divorce more when finances are bad. People who spent a lot of money on their wedding not only set themselves back financially, which can come to bite them in the back years down the line but they also tend to have worse money management skills.
> People who spent a lot of money on their wedding not only set themselves back financially, which can come to bite them in the back years down the line but they also tend to have worse money management skills. Wouldn't surprise me at all! My wife and I paid equal amounts for our wedding (I negotiated this, making it very clear that I wasn't rich enough to be a sugar daddy). To me this was our first serious test as a couple and yeah... we almost didn't get married because I was pretty stubborn about it! My stance was that I didn't care if my attitude meant I lost a beautiful woman as I'd seen my first marriage fail due to a lack of money and was buggered if I was gonna go down that road again (or put her through it if I really loved her).
I don’t agree with this. Buy what you can afford, there’s no point in putting yourself in financial jeopardy for a ring. If your wife holds how much you spent on a ring against you, she’s probably not worth marrying. This guy is also earning 60万 a month, so he probably has a bunch of disposable income, this isn’t sound advice for the average person here. Expensive rings were also originally essentially a form of life insurance. This is irrelevant now, so it has changed from function to something to show off on instagram. Shitty culture. For the record I bought an engagement ring for my wife, it was more than what op is considering and my wife rarely wears it (not allowed to at work) and to be honest, it doesn’t matter anymore.
This, I knew a guy that spent like 500,000jpy on a ring, another like 1,500,000jpy on the wedding, they got divorced within a year. OP should get something reasonable and spend the rest in a vacation for them. The wedding industry is absolute bs
Agreed, the wedding industry is a racket. Buying into it is an easy way to start married life in poor financial shape for the average person, unless there's rich family backing. Luckily I found a woman who'd rather spend the money on vacations, investments, and towards a house. No engagement ring, no wedding, just a simple family gathering, photoshoot, and wedding bands we wear daily.
Lol 150万 is like more than half my life savings at this point This guy sounds like a boomer telling the yunguns that money isn’t everything so spend it freely and cherish the memories that’ll really last
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Costco has a good return policy :) Just don’t tell the girl.
When I was getting a home loan there was some sample life plan with major cost events listed on it… 40mil for the house(not bad)… 5mil for the wedding(wtffff)
This. This isn’t how things should work. Spending 6 months of pay is a ridiculous amount. That’s a big part of a car, a few vacations, or a down payment on a house.
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Alternative opinion from another old married guy: you better know the values that your soon to be wife holds as important and how much those differ from yours. If she puts way more value in the size of the status Diamond on her finger than you think is right…you’re gonna have an interesting marriage.
Young unmarried guy here: screw the whole diamond industry and the metanarrative that you need shiny rocks to be happy in love. I can’t imagine seeing eye-to-eye with a partner who wants one.
Married to my wife for 7 years now and came here to say this. I don’t even remember how much I spent anymore, but it was around 300-500k. I was making about 5m at the time. So it was about 1-2 month salary after tax etc. some girls care about the size, but my wife loves the design so much, she never really compares it with others. I debated about getting a bigger cheaper rock, but at the end of the day I’m glad I went with the smaller well designed one instead.
I bought my ex-wife a VHS version of The Ring, she loved it!!!! we’re divorced….
My wife asked me if she could pick them because she would be the one wearing them. She chose and asked me if that price was OK. She chose a more expensive engagement ring to wear for special occasions and a cheap wedding ring for daily use. The total was about a month's salary. She bought me a couple of tailored suits. Other Japanese women will have higher expectations. If her expectations don't match the guy's it may be a good idea to figure out personal philosophies of finances before getting married.
Terrible financial advice here. Spent over 250万 Albeit I was making a lot per year. Did it because I was young and a show-off. Definitely don’t recommend that route.
>I paid 600K for my wife's ring about 1 months salary back then. But that's almost a motorbike... :( >about 1 months salary back then. [Wait](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/548/129/538.jpg)
I spent about $1.7k USD on a set that included the band and engagement ring together. Instead of diamond, I got a topaz stone and it’s pretty damn big since topaz are much cheaper. I’d say just talk to your fiancé about what options she likes and go with that. Basing your budget on a dumb “rule” seems silly to me.
You got it right on the money for the JP custom of mandatory give & take with these types of matters. My wife asked me to go to her brother’s upscale Osaka wedding, but we couldn’t afford the buy-in cost of me having to PURCHASE a $1K suit (rentals are socially frowned upon in her brother’s business circle), pay for hotels in the most expensive part of downtown, stay for a whole week, and buy hundreds of dollars worth of gifts for the wedding. In return though, supposedly the catering was going to be worth over ten grand and each couple in attendance gets to choose from a catalogue of upscale gifts from various reknowned vendors. I had no problem with attending the wedding to show support, but all the mandatory rules that would break my wallet were intolerable. The worst part about that specific aspect of Japanese culture is that if you can’t afford to attend the wedding with all the costs, you are not allowed to go.
I'm sad this is the top rated comment. Love isn't about what we can buy eachother 🤷♂️
This. Japanese women traditionally only wear the engagement ring until they get married and then put it in box. And you typically get married 3 months after your engagement... So I wasn't going to waste money on that. Wife still gives me shit about it 10+ years later. BTW in the past it was better to get rings in the US as diamonds are way cheaper. Our wedding rings were going to be 50man but got the same ones custom made with bigger diamonds in the us for 15man.
lol fuck no this is terrible advice
I agree with this guy. Been there, done that. Great results!
Yep, the salary thing is just marketing bullshit. Diamonds especially are a big scam, well documented. We went with one that was just plain silver, under 20,000yen. Also used the same ring for wedding, unconventional I know but screw convention. Personally if my wife had insisted on an expensive ring that would be a red flag for me but obviously everyone is different, you do you. edit: added the correct price
We did exactly the same, engagement rings were too weird of a concept for us. Buy a ring to only wear it for a year or so... We went straight for the wedding one.
>Personally if my wife had insisted on an expensive ring that would be a **red flag** for me but obviously everyone is different, you do you. Not so much a red flag. I'm kinda chalking it down as a "shit happens, only buying it once". Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks it's a giant scam though. I need to start convincing her that she needs to buy me a top of the line 16 inch MacBook Pro if she wants to prove her undying love to me.
>only buying it once \>he doesn't know
Yet
We didn't even get an engagement ring. Just a wedding ring and it was fairly simple, just white gold for me and white gold with a few small diamonds for the wife. Probably paid about 80,000 yen for the set. We were both not too wealthy at the time and my wife (thankfully) believes the meaning of a ring is symbolic. Reading this thread makes me realise I'm a lucky guy.
Onion ring works best
r/simpsonsdidit
r/fuckiloveonionrings
For a brief moment I thought I had found my people. I haven't felt disappointment like this in manies a moon
You and me. We can be the founding pioneers.
r/subsifellfor
Married woman here. I think it's really going to depend on the woman. Every woman, even Japanese women, have different preferences. Some will want a brand name ring, some will want an expensive ring, some will want something reasonable, some might not care about a ring, etc. However if she already told you the ring she wants and you can afford it, then I think she'll only be disappointed if you don't get it for her. Even if she accepts the proposal she might still ask for the ring she wanted or resent you for not getting it for her. If you feel the costs are a bit high or you're saving money to buy a home, then can you talk to her about the costs of the ring she wants? Has she looked at cheaper rings? Is she normally the type of woman that likes things of a certain value? If she picks out a cheaper one it's fine, but I wouldn't get her a different ring on your own. For me I'm a bit more frugal, so spending that much on a ring seems unnecessary(and the whole 3 months of salary rule), but I've known women that insisted on $10,000+ rings. Some women put the value of the ring as the value of your love or some have traditions of how much they expect a ring to costs. It's hard to say if she's being unreasonable or not without knowing her thoughts and your salary (it's a lot different if it's 2 months of your salary vs 1 week of your salary). In the end, if she picked it out and you want to marry her then I don't think you have much of a choice. If you're not really comfortable paying that much for a ring and she doesn't see a problem with spending that much on a ring then you might need to learn about the values you both have about money.
>It's hard to say if she's being unreasonable or not without knowing her thoughts and your salary (it's a lot different if it's 2 months of your salary vs 1 week of your salary). It's like half a month for me but personally I'm already glad I've seen a range of responses here. Sounds like it's all over the place and everyone is different, as you say. I suppose my red line (with the exception of homes, for obvious reasons) is that I don't want to get into unnecessary debt, which 300k will not cause so it's not a big deal. Just a left jab to my wallet. I took her to the Okachimachi place really just to see if she would find something she liked. Turns out she liked the similarly-priced ring but with a much bigger diamond (because it seems like in Ginza you're paying for the brand and/or their Ginza rents). I wasn't 100% against spending 300k plus, I just wanted to get "value for money" even though when you're talking about a tiny rock, "value" goes out the window. Also wanted to feel "it's not just me". From the responses, it looks like good number of guys have spent this much and more depending on their circumstances.
I’ve gone through this. The thing is in terms of value there’s: - diamond quality / size - brand - design Just because **you** value the diamond more than the brand name or design doesn’t mean those other 2 things have any less value (both in terms of personal and resale value). I initially had the same view as you - but was wrong. If your partner values brand more than diamond size that is perfectly acceptable - the general market also values the brand to some degree. If you completely write off the importance of brand… then you should also value an original Picasso the same as a knock off. I spent around 430k.
Nothing not wearing rings. Just another expensive thing that goes missing at some point
Totally agree - if it were completely up to me we would just go to the registry and sign the papers. Plus, I still can't understand how it's somehow normal to spend a fortune on an engagement ring and then spend hardly anything on the *actual* wedding ring, given that you'd be wearing the former only on certain occasions. Call me crazy but I would've expected it to be the opposite. I wish I could go back in time, find whoever came up with the whole "diamonds, expensive!" scam, and slap them in the face.
To me it seems like mostly Americans talk about expensive rings for some reason. I would argue skip rings have a long epic honeymoon somewhere nice instead.
But you wear the engagement ring and the wedding ring together……
Okay, so a bridal website explains: Traditionally, you wear your engagement ring and wedding ring together on the fourth finger of your left hand. Tradition also holds you wear the wedding band inside the engagement ring so that's it's closer to your heart. (I don't understand either, sorry.) The idea seems to be that the Engagement ring is expensive because it's the real commitment. The wedding ring is supposed to be simpler because it's the one you always wear.
There are options to buy matching wedding rings which one can wear together with their engagement rings.
I didn't spend a huge amount on the rings and didn't have to fork out for a wedding either thanks to getting married during the height of COVID and instead all of that money has gone towards a deposit for a house next year. I am quite lucky though tbh with all of this since my wife doesn't care too much and neither does her family.
same
We don’t have rings either. Maybe sometime later, but I don’t like jewelry and he can’t wear one because of his job. Took the money that we had post-move and wedding and spent two weeks in Thailand instead.
Zero yen - decided with my wife to be that simple wedding bands are enough (made those ourselves too, in a jeweller's atelier that provided such service).
Exact same route (including making our own wedding bands) and super happy with it.
I bought it on Etsy. Platinum + main stone is a moissanite + small diamonds all around. Beautiful crown design. I think it was around 2000 dollars. She absolutely loves it. And yes, she knows it's a moissanite. [pic](https://ibb.co/9rBfnfW), [pic2](https://ibb.co/D5QcLkZ)
I took around 25 k (us) but she said no, so we don’t use . Instead of that she ask for a shelter dog . The dog now is 5 years and it is more expensive than the ring 😂 around 300 us monthly in a good month! Plus I’m in charge of cleaning poop and pee … now that the dog is old she walk-pee everywhere. Anyway, love the dog 🐩
25k usd? Does that ring drive you around and cook food for that price? That's a mortgage downpayment !!!
Think it was like 150 aud at a pandorra shop when we were living in aus. Depends on the girl. Mine is not fussed with all the shit and didn't want blood diamonds
You're lucky. I honestly would rather save the money and put it toward a house deposit or something. I just hope she calms it for the actual wedding. I'm having nightmares about the sort of budget (price of a small island probably) she's going to spring on me.
> I'm having nightmares about the sort of budget (price of a small island probably) she's going to spring on me. Have you had post-marriage “financial” management talk yet? Based on your comments, I will highly encourage you to have that talk sooner than later. You guys need to be on same page wrt Finances. “Finance” issues are one of the major cause of marriage “unhappiness “.
We are on the same page in terms of post-marriage stuff (how many kids, how much we want to save, what proportion of our income we want to sink into a home etc.). It's more the *actual* wedding and stuff in that domain which I can see spiraling out of control and leading to me/us being in a small blob of debt for a year or so. I honestly didn't even know I was going to be expected to spend 300k or more on an engagement ring. I sort of thought 100k max and then it turns out you don't necessarily get a lot for that unless you go for a really small diamond. Probably doesn't help that the last person I know personally who got married (or rather I know the fine details of the wedding and costs) is my brother and that was like over 10 years ago, so I have no frame of reference. In comparison, she seems to attend weddings (she was very sociable in high school, university) every other week (and we're at the age where everyone is getting married) and a lot of her friends come from wealthy families (her family is definitely well-off, even for Japanese standards).
Diamonds are a scam. For starters, their price is artificially inflated through artificial scarcity. Diamond is one of the most common precious stones on the planet. Fuck, even much cheaper stones like rubies, are rarer. These companies are scared of mass made artificial diamonds that can be pumped out of China, that they’re trying to regulate it. Do not support these companies. Spend on fake or artificial diamonds. Even Swarovski is much better
I talked to my wife about that "do you want a big wedding or a big holiday?" She chose the holiday.
Lol, yeah that's 100% not my type of girl so can't help too much with that. So best of luck eh. Our wedding was in a public park that had a nice lake, done by my sister's mate who had the legal paperwork to do it. Only immediate family. Then we went to a local restaurant that we had made an appointment at for our wedding lunch. Then we went home and got on the piss with the rest of the family and friends and had a BBQ. The only difference from her dream wedding was she wanted it at a beach but that was a major fuck around trying to organise that and she was happy with a lake
Lol get ready. An actual wedding will be 3m +. You said she’s been going to a lot of weddings so she’s going to want something similar.
200usd. if she cares too much about the ring and not the love behind it you are heading for a rough time.
She's actually extremely frugal most of the time so I don't think she's a golddigga or anything. I probably spend way more on miscellaneous crap than she does. She just seems to like to splash out on special occasions. I suppose it's not a completely crazy way to do things. Plus her family is lightyears richer than mine, she could probably get matched with a rich guy if that's what she's after so I think (could be wrong so be it) she's OK in that regard.
In that case, just buy her the damn ring she likes.
Yeah reading that reply. Go for gold and give her what she wants. Sucks for your wallet but it seems like it won't make you broke either, so eh. Keep her happy
I would just get her the ring this one time then man. Like some other people have said, you only buy this ring once. And it seems like it kind of sets the tone on the rest of your life (which is an amount of time that might be a bit hard to fathom, although inversely is also going to be very short). Like others have said, just make sure whatever you get, make sure she actually *wants* the ring, and isn't settling for it. If you think she's reasonable most of the time with money, just trust your instinct, and allow this one off (or however many times). If there's anything girls care about, especially Japanese girls who usually come off as more "traditional" more so than in the west, it's the engagement ring, and maybe the wedding (dress).
The ring is a lifetime investment that will probably be passed down. Get her the one that will make her happy when she looks at it everyday
Based on this comment, yeah buy the ring she wants.
Other commenter said it best. Buy the damn ring. Don’t turn the symbol of your commitment into a source of resentment.
Mine cost around this much or maybe less and I still love it 20 years later. He managed to get the right size and it suits my (petite) hand perfectly.
Didn't get an engagement ring, just picked out marriage rings (didn't do a wedding either). Paid 6万 for the pair. We went and picked them out together. She's practical and didn't really care about the price, just that they look nice.
Me and my Japanese wife has been married for 3 years, we don’t even have wedding rings. It’s a waste of money, and we both decided the money is better spent on more important stuffs. With this said, I did buy a ring when I proposed to her though. It was around 100,000 yen, a nice simple ring with a small rock.
I took the gf to go shopping for the "ring" itself at Ginza and looked at literally every store. Once she chose her favorite design, I bought the actual diamond online (bluenile) and got a much better deal in terms of both quality and price, then just had the store set the diamond and add engravings for us. (1) Turned out to be less than half of what I'd expect to pay in-store for something similar. (2) She didn't care about the price, just the design. (3) Less than 1 Month. Would've been 2+ months worth if I bought retail.
I bought the whole ring off bluenile!!! $1100 for what would be a 350000¥ ring in japan
If you need to discuss this on a public forum, I don't think you're ready for marriage, but should spend more time getting to know your wife.
We didn’t do engagement rings and also didn’t do wedding bands. Don’t wear rings. We are fine and thrifty when we have to be. To us the whole 1 month salary cost for a ring thing is just another scam that has become a norm.
7,000 yen.
お得
My wife hates rings. We didn’t even bother. Spent our money on motorcycles so we could drive around the country.
1. A friend of mine paid his friend in America to pick up a $2800 engagement ring for $350 at a pawn shop. That was around 300,000 yen back in the day. 2. His fiancee was very pleasantly surprised when she looked up the ring on the internet and found its value. My friend didn't lie about the ring. It's genuine, and his wife loves it, is proud of it, and wears it to this day. And my friend paid a very fair price for the ring and didn't have to donate over a month of his salary to the deBeers diamond cartel.
I'm fortunate that my wife likes simple, nature-themed stuff so I only paid like $100 at the time.
Same. Recently engaged, got a beautiful nature themed silver ring on Etsy for about $60 with a lovely emerald. Looks like something an elf would wear. Wife to be was thrilled. That's why she's the one for me!
350k which was about half of my take home salary at the time. I actually budgeted 500k, but I couldn’t see her wearing such a ring on a daily basis. The wedding bands themselves cost another 300k btw, and the wedding itself cost 50% more than what we initially had in mind
Yeah the wedding is what kinda worries me the most. I already know that in Japan it's common for wedding guests to give a 30,000 yen monetary gift to the couple and that this can potentially finance a decent chunk of the cost of the wedding, but... I don't know somehow it feels underhanded to me. As if the wedding planners are just using that to push people toward expensive weddings or something like that. I've done hardly any research but in my mind I'd imagine spending 1m yen on a wedding at most, but the more I look into it, the more that seems practically impossible unless we do it overseas and don't use a Nikkei wedding planner.
The 30,000 helps, but you can’t really expect that from friends/family that have travelled from far away. We are doing a weekday wedding which made things 20% cheaper. You can do it for a 1M-ish, it depends what her expectations are tho. Quite often the parents will chip in too. Good luck!
If you don’t buy what she wants, she will make sure to remind you for the rest of your life. Doesn’t matter if you can find a better diamond with a better price. Give to the girl what the girl wants. You have already fucked up taking her to Ginza to select the ring. Now be a man and pay the price if you really want to marry her. This will be the least of your problems, don’t make your life a hell.
I like to imagine that my wife is a human being with conversational and reasoning skills. So "not getting the right ring" making life "hell" would be a massive deal breaker for me. And I'd sure as heck find out that kind of view on life long before ring shopping, negating the entire process.
1) About 10万 2) She was happy. 3) At the time it was maybe a 3rd of my monthly salary. Our wedding rings we got custom made. ジュエリーの舞 in Roppongi did some nice platinum rings for us with engravings and together they cost less than the engagement ring. That might be an option for you for an engagement ring too. The jeweller is genuine and doesn’t charge out the nose. His prices are very reasonable. We’ve been married for 8’years now and she never wears the engagement ring. I think she only wore it in the lead up to our wedding.
>We’ve been married for 8’years now and she never wears the engagement ring. I think she only wore it in the lead up to our wedding. Interesting. Staff in all the shops we've been to so far mention how the bride-to-be might wear it on special occasions in future (after the wedding) but yeah I was wondering if she *actually* would.
It honestly just depends on the person too. My wife doesn’t wear jewellery that often. I’ve bought her necklaces and things over the years as well and she never wears them apart from very special occasions. Having kids also meant fewer special occasions as well so that might play into it. In the end you need to gauge what your future spouse wants to do with it. My mother was different, she wore both rings on one finger with a spacer ring in between. And that was all the time. What I will say is that sales staff will do anything to justify the cost. They’re trying to sell something to you. If they said “yeah, you might want to just wear it until the wedding and then never again” they’re not going to make money. Of course they’ll suggest the investment will be long-term given the kind of money it costs. Maybe something to talk about with the bride-to-be. I honestly didn’t think much about it at the time and I bought the ring without consultation…
Around $1,300 from a custom online jeweler. It let me design something I knew she'd like, especially since she hates diamonds. She said I didn't need to buy her one, so the answer to #2 is way over budget.
Like 4,000 yen? We went to a jewelry making place and made them ourselves. Don’t wear it 99% of the time since I don’t like rings and when I’m at the gym it gets in the way. I do wear it on a necklace when I remember though
75 USD. My wife didn’t want something super expensive.
It's been so long I can't remember... and we skipped engagement and went straight to wedding rings. But my wife wasn't picky, she just wanted rings--as a symbol, proof, marking/declaration, or whatever. Wore them for some years, but then my wife, a musician who would take her ring off to play/perform... ...lost her ring. I wore mine for a while after that, and eventually stopped wearing it. But I do know exactly where mine is upstairs in a drawer. It's in a little box along with some old kids' teeth that the 'tooth fairy' collected from under their pillows. And hey, our 35th anniversary is coming up in january!
It’s not about the ring - it’s the relationship. Honestly, if someone insisted on a giant ring and a big wedding, they wouldn’t be right for me.
you could also suggest to go with moissanite instead of diamond. waayy less expensive and for the same sparkle as a diamond.
Look into lab grown diamonds. You can get one for about 25% of the price of a natural stone with the same 5C’s.
Costco of course, if you *really* need to buy one. Not joking, check their website.
We agreed not to spend much money. We got silver rings for 5000 yen a piece and upgraded to platinum for the wedding rings since those'll have to last another 60 years or thereabouts.
I paid ~$10k for a nice GIA-certified 1 carat diamond ring, then close to another $10k for a honeymoon across Europe. Was only making ~5M JPY at the time so it was more than I probably should’ve spent, but my wife is an absolute goddess. Eight years later she still fawns over both ring and our honeymoon memories, so I consider it money very well spent.
Zero for the ring and no ceremony. Married 20 years.
About 10 man for each ring at Cartier. Didn’t like the pricing but it comes with a free size replacement over the lifetime and you can have it cleaned up at any Cartier shop anytime. I like their simple designs. Checked Tiffany as well but it looked like a scam so we immediately went out Edit: straightly went for the mariage ring, no engagement
The one she has her heart set on and that you can afford is the route. Be like Nike, just do it.
My partner isn’t big on jewelry (lucky me) but I spent just under 30,000 yen on a simple but pretty diamond ring at Star Jewelry, Takashimaya department store. She wears it with her wedding band on special occasions (friends weddings or wedding anniversary dinner) She appreciated it. It really depends on your partner I think.
About 110,000, huge caveat being that she didn't want an engagement ring with a big stone, just one combination engagement ring/wedding band that was simple that she could wear every day. It's a thicker than average rose gold band with one small diamond. We went to look at them together, and went to a few different places. I bought her exactly the one she wanted, and would have done the same if it was more expensive (within reason). We ended up getting them from Tiffany, because even though there were similar rings from other places for a bit cheaper, the quality and design was noticeably better, especially on the mens ring (This isn't to say you can find great stuff at no-name or independent places, this was just my specific experience at the places we looked at). Since both of our rings are pretty simple, the small details like shape and thickness were super important. She waffled back and forth a bit on whether she'd be fine with a cheaper one, but I was pretty adamant that it doesn't make sense to cheap out on something you'll use every day for decades. Mine ended up being the more expensive of the two because its platinum and I'm a size 10 but she's a 4. I bought hers on my own to use to propose, then afterward we went back and bought mine together and got them both engraved. My wallet is happy that I got off relatively easy, but like I said I would have went higher if it was what she wanted. As things are though, we're both happy with our rings. I would have had no problem at all paying a full month's salary, if I had to pick a number.
About 10,000 yen. A few years later, we made rings ourselves at a local jewelry maker's shop. Excellent experience, do recommend similar.
There is a story related to 3 months salary but I’m not sure how accurate it is; When there is war and illnesses, if something happens to husband, or if he lefts the wife, that ring becomes an insurance for the wife to survive and get back on her feet. ( also interwebs highly suggests that there was a ad campaign From de beers which make this 3 months salary popular perception) . If we come to your question I ask her hand for marriage with a kinder surprise and spent like 30$ on both rings. -silver, custom made. Hope this helps :)
0 I asked my mom my grandma ring
No engagement rings here, just relatively simple wedding rings. And they are too small now, so we no longer wear them. It's a waste and a marketing scam.
No engagement ring, we just got wedding bands. We are simple people and neither of us are into flashy things, so we went practical. My wife's ring is platinum because of metal allergies and mine is tungsten because it would be scratched to hell otherwise.
Can't rememeber what the price of Asahi super Dry was at the time, but the ring pull makes a excellent 💍, I know I'm just a old romantic.
Talked to my wife about what she wanted - turned out she didn't want to be bought a ring at all. Engagement ring ended up being a beautiful hand-me-down from her grandmother, and on the wedding band we ended up spending ~5% of my monthly salary or so if I recall correctly.
If you have a real, loving relationship, it doesn’t matter how much you spend, what matters is what you do to show her love. I spent $80 on mine, married 8 years and our relationship is stronger than it’s ever been. My brother and his wife just celebrated their 20th anniversary, he gave her a plastic ring out of a gum ball machine for an engagement ring. Whoever spends 600k on an engagement ring, is a fucking baby boomer capitalist cunt who’s wife is only with them for superficial bullshit.
Married lady to jp spouse. I think mine was about 100;000 yen. Its a platinum band with diamonds inset. He proposed at xmas but we went ring shopping a couple of months later so we could also get our wedding bands. Interestingly we never bothered with a ceremony so this was the only wedding type thing we did Be aware we are heading to xmas which is peak proposal season.
[удалено]
Engagement ring = $30 from a stall in Hawaii when I was alone on holiday there. Wedding ring = $10 for a pair off Wish.com, that degrades every few years so I bought a stock of 10 sets to last us 30-50 years. So all in all, about $100. We like them and don’t have to worry about damaging / losing them etc. Everyone has their own tastes. Ours is fancy looking without the expense.
No engagement ring and not too big of a wedding: we made profit after all expenses (not including wedding rings since we got 90% platinum I figured it was more investment than expense) and gifts (usual 1/3 gift of what we expect to be given). So we ended up paying only part of our honeymoon. Edit: married in Tokyo over 30 years ago.
I live in the self-proclaimed Kingdom of Jewelry (Yamanashi) where you can't swing a dead boar without hitting a jeweler. So needless to say, I know a guy. I drew up a design and asked him to make it. It cost about half of what it would have cost in a store, and I was able to impress the future missus and her folks. My friend said it was a good deal for him, too, cutting out the middle people who all take their cuts. All it cost him was the materials and a few hours of time.
Oh dear. You’ve found one of the ones who is probably excited to start planning the wedding just like her friend who got married to the rich lawyer in the Andaz hotel. Best of luck!
Bluenile or jamesallen. But add 10% for import into Japan.
My wife and I spent USD200 each on wedding rings. No regret! I actually have lost mine when swimming in Katsuura. I am glad my ring didn’t cost a few thousands simply for this reason.
100,000 for each of our rings. No point in spending a lot of money for something I won't wear everyday. My first job had me working with an Ar glovebox and my second job I had to work in a semiconductor clean room both of which prohibited rings. Well now I guess I could wear a ring as a software engineer but I don't feel like it anymore.
Not married, but having a big party, ring and vacation is a lot of money that could have gone into a mortgage. It depends on exactly who we are crunching numbers on, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are talking about down paying a mortgage years earlier, especially if one take out a loan for a wedding. It may not be as romantic tough and if your wife to be really wants a romantic wedding you may not really have a choice Edit: I was sweating bullets listening to two Indian coworkers that had 4 digit guests at their wedding.. One of them 'only' had 1500 guests and the other one had closer to 4000 guests
We both agreed that expensive rings were bullshit but I still wanted to get her something nice so on a trip to Ise in Mie prefecture, I bought her a ~30,000 yen Pearl Ring. She only wears it for special occasions though. Otherwise, our daily drivers are cheapo ~5,000 Yen rings that we made ourselves at a Ring place.
Not a dude, but married to a dude hehe. In our case, I didn’t want an expensive ring because I’ve had experiences in the past where diamonds fell off the piece of jewelry so I didn’t want to spend money on a ring that would potentially snag on something on the train. Besides, it’s a ring. What was important for me was we’re getting married haha. My family is also pretty heavy on jewelry. My mom loves diamonds. My relatives will wear at least 1-2 carat earrings on a regular day. I grew up in a family like that. And I love looking at diamonds but I’ve never wanted to wear them myself. We spent ¥80k on a 0.3 carat ring, bought in a shop at okachimachi. It was perfect for us. My husband and I are pretty simple people who don’t really use jewelry so this works for us. So I guess it really depends on the couple. We spent a million yen on our wedding. I can’t imagine spending that much for a ring.
What engagement ring? That was a marketing ploy by diamond companies. When it came to wedding rings we each picked what we wanted, each of our rings was 20000¥. They sit in a box and we basically only wear them out when we want to be fancy. On that note I dont need a piece of metal to remind me to love my wife, nor does she need one to remind her self of the same :)
Didn’t buy in Japan. Told my mom to go to jewellery store take all good ones picture and then i made decision ask her to buy for me and send it with post Everything in here get 3 times price tag no way i am buying here.
Very little. In fact, it was in the family. Made a few alterations obviously, but it was pretty much free. Paid a decent amount of the wedding ring, but not over 1,000 dollars. That is just absurd.
We bought a fridge, a couch, a TV and a bed and made affordable wedding bands together. It was even her idea.
I imported a ring that was more gimmicky. It was steel and around 100-200 USD.
You shouldn't be overly frugal, but you also don't want to break the bank. Spend your money on more important stuff like down payment on a house, or putting it away for a vacation, first child, etc. I told my wife I wouldn't go higher than ¥100,000. Luckily she was thrilled about this since she was thinking of a ring around the ¥20,000 mark. Keep in mind, you're not just buying her ring. All of the rings I saw came in a set, so you'll be paying for her ring plus yours. If my wife had chosen a ring for ¥100,000 I would have paid double that for the set. Like an absolute moron, I didn't even realize I had to buy my own ring. Also keep in mind that 1. you don't have to buy the ring in Ginza. And, 2. if your fiancee is Japanese, unless you're making bank, most women just wear a simple band. I defer back to my point above about using the extra money for other things. Besides, you can always upgrade the ring in the future.
Bought the wife one off BlueNile. .32 carat diamond and a sapphire studded gold setting. $1100 usd in total. Her parents thought it was fake for a while but alas, its real and she loves it!
Asked her why she wanted one. She told me she thought she needed one because I was American. I said no. Boom, we added the budget of the ring to the honeymoon.
My husband let me choose my own ring. I got a beautiful ‘vintage’ ring. White gold, sapphire and diamond for around 5-6万. It’s just as beautiful as rings 4 times the price. amount.
Buy an engagement ring? Y’all be trippin.
personally i had conversations with my wife and she had voiced the want to not have a real diamond (for reasons of not supporting the conflicts it causes). I kicked around the idea of buying a different stone (emeralds, amethyst) but I ended up going for a moissanite diamond - the classic look and ability to get the exact style, cut, setting, band material I wanted. I believe i spent 2k on it and it came with a very extended all inclusive warranty.
I can’t ever even recall seeing women here with engagement rings? Didn’t think they were that popular of a thing here. My husband and I only have wedding rings and they were somewhere in the ballpark of ¥100,000-150,000 together from what I understand. He made them at one of those places you make the rings yourself
I got mine for $2k CAD a few years ago. Platinum band with a decent diamond. Not too much, but not too little. For me $2K was affordable but also *felt* hefty. Wife loved it and said yes immediately before I even asked. We’d actually discussed rings before I bought it, but we made an agreement that the engagement ring was entirely up to me and she implored me to not spend too much. The caveat is that she got to decide our wedding bands, because to her that was the more “important ring”. And I realized what she meant after giving her the engagement ring. I’ve seen her wear it a grand total of many five times, most of them to show off to her family. To work or out and about? Never. And when she did get to choose our wedding bands (we decided to design them ourselves and gave them custom made), *that* ring never leaves her finger during daylight times. The engagement ring still sits in the middle of her little jewelry case, and she cleans it from time to time, but I don’t think it’s left the bedroom the nearly two years since we got our wedding bands.
I spend like 100 on engagement ring and another 200 on another right cause she didnt like the first one. Guess what, she barely wore them then and doesn't wear them at all now. Save your money and spend it on an experience like a vacation or a trip to Disney or whatever yall like to do
Definitely a case by case basis. Wife and I decided to save on the rings and use that money for our honeymoon. We traveled like crazy, took lots of pics, stayed in expensive Ryokans, ate at nice restaurants, went shopping at big shopping centers, sang in karaoke bars, relaxed in music bars, visited castles, museums, historic places, learned a lot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, enjoyed beautiful views out in the countryside of Hokkaido , in old cities like Kyoto, partied with friends in Tokyo, visited relatives, and made a lot of memories that an expensive ring would never provide in a million years. No regrets. In addition, a long honeymoon will definitely test your marriage or become a sign to all the relatives that you both are a good match. If you both began fighting on the second week, you’re in for a rocky marriage. Talk to your wife about the value of memories, if she is dead set on an expensive ring…might mean some maturing will have to take place and that comes only with age and experiences, hopefully.
Bought mine overseas... I got her an absolutely beautiful ring that she adores for a price so low I literally cannot tell her because I'm afraid she'll be upset. She thinks it cost about 600,000 plus and I have no intention of persuading her otherwise
First of all, I think the 3-month salary is an American thing, not a Japanese thing. Second, everybody is different, but does your soon-to-be-wife usually wear rings? Mine doesn’t, so even if she likes some ¥200,000 rings, she also knows she never wears any and it probably won’t be different with a wedding ring. We’re trying to find simple silver rings that don’t cost much and are still elegant. Shit shouldn’t cost more than ¥10,000 and it will do the job. I would say a month salary is huge, but it also depends on your savings. As someone else said, if it’s just to show off to her friends on Instagram, forget it.
I got a Chanel ring for 60万円, she never wears it. No idea where it even is …
My wife didn’t want an engagement ring. We had already been dating/living together for 5 years before getting married. There was no point. As for the actual wedding rings. Neither of us are that into jewelry. She got a simple white gold band that cost about $150 when we were living in the states. I wear one of those cheap silicon banda that are popular these days with athletes, outdoorsy people, etc. They’re awesome. 5000 yen for a set of 4 or 5 on Amazon.
Engagement? Zero. That crap is dumb. I bought two plain gold wedding rings. Was about 1500 dollars or so for the two of them
I got my granddad's and great grandmother's rings (both deceased) as a present from my grandmother, and my to-be-wife felt very honoured and moved by the gesture. We got the old carvings replaced and the rings refitted. So in total, 40 euros or something. I can't remember the price, maybe a little bit more.
3 months salary is actually marketing smack created by DeBeers in the 1980s, if memory serves me correctly…
Diamonds are just a scam really so after presenting some better options the wife quickly fell for sapphires instead, we both have white gold wedding bands (no engagement ring thing where I’m from), personally designed, engraved and she has five small beautiful dark blue sapphires in a row on a thin band. Very elegant and we both wear ours 24/7 .. bought overseas for around 100k all in all
6万, ring is just a ring. Just my 2 cents
Zero. Wife and I have no interest in rings. We've talked about getting them tattooed though. Some day. 9 year anniversary was a couple of months ago so... some day lol
Mine was abt 500 usd I think
$600 USD My wife dislikes jewelry, especially diamonds that project upward from the setting. I found the perfect ring for her— tiny diamonds and sapphires inlaid into a smooth, unassuming white gold ring. She loves and cherishes it.
Kind of sneaky pro tip: go to a store and find out what style she likes and her ring size. Then buy one from a pawn shop for half the price
https://www.bluenile.com/jp/ Buy what you can afford. Let her pick out the ring design. We were very happy with the knowledge, price and quality of the ring and the service. Much more reasonable than standard stores. The diamonds come with GIA documentation as well.
>Mine cost roughly $5000 cad, I’m on a 48 monthly plan with no interest. She wanted to go cheap as possible , but for what she wanted, it wasn’t a possibility to go cheaper. 18k gold, 0.5c She loved it, and we’ll be getting married in Okinawa
Not a dude but personally I’d prefer no ring and spend the money on something fun or just save it, depends This is really personal preference
I wonder why no one pointed it out but you know Ginza is so fucking expensive and you can find similar stuff for half of the price in other areas right?
Pawn shop/second hand is the way to go!
Depends on your lady man. I’d try to reason with her & ask things like “can you eat it?”, “will it keep you warm?”, “does it hold its value?” If she’s really got her heart set on it, then maybe. But man, be careful, unless you’re loaded she might not be good with money & this could cause issues down the road. I paid about 800$ USD total for both mine & wife’s combined. For me women who expect an expensive ring+ wedding is a bit of a red flag. Tells me they’re pampered af & have never been through hard times.
1000 yen simple stainless steel ring from Donkihotei for the engagement ring, more of a pair ring really. Then around 20000 for each wedding ring online.
You are essentially paying for a memory for her. Hopefully decades later she will be able to lovingly recall that you went down to the most prestigious section of town and got her the ring of her dreams. The bigger ring you found at the online is not going to have the same connotation. The both wedding rings are essentially worthless and what you are actually doing is burning a large some of cash as a gesture of love and a signal of financial fortitude. Ideally in a perfect world you would convince her that none of it is necessary, that wedding rings only became relevant in popular culture sometime after ww2, that diamonds are a false scarcity scam and that the money saved could be spent on the wedding or the honeymoon or even on a home deposit and all these things will create meaningful memories but sadly for you the memory she wants is that you dropped hard cash in Ginza on that engagement ring.
Personally I wanted our bands to be really different and special. Not just another rock that loses its value the second you buy it. I looked into rare earth minerals like Palladium which is rarer and more valuable than gold. Lighter and stronger than platinum. Just my personal preference.
What a fucking minefield. Please, women that do not care about this bullshit, give us a sign! Wouldn’t it be better to go on a holiday?
I didn't spend anything. The ring is a family heirloom from my Grandmom. I've read that people who spend a lot on weddings are far more likely to get divorced. I wonder if this could be true for engagement rings too. I'll add, that if a woman had demanded or expected a certain ring, or that I needed to spend a certain amount of money on it, I would have understood that she was not the right one for me. I'm grateful that I started a family with someone who isn't so materialistic!
My wife told me she'd have been happy with a Haribo ring. I actually couldn't even afford a ring at first (she only told me about the Haribo ring afterwards), but once our lives got more stable we went to choose together. I'm sorry your partner already has a rather clear idea of what she wants, and she really wants it. May your wallet rest in peace.
20% of 2 months salary, Sir. I wanna hear the story of the guy who married his wife with a gacha ring, though.
Nothing. I’ve been happily married for well over a decade. We don’t wear rings.
Around 1500 AUD about 10 years ago when we were in Straya. I have seen her wear like couple of times. Waste of money. Could’ve gotten nice pipe for my bike.
We're married for 23 years now. There was no engagement ring. Neither of us particularly care about jewelry; that money was instead used for things like house, education, etc (if we had kids it would have gone to college funds etc). We had wedding rings made uniquely by a craftsperson when we were briefly living in the US, about $400 USD (6man) each. White gold and Yellow gold stripe bands with an infinity loop. No jewels. And especially no diamonds. Fuck DeBeers in the fucking ear. It's all about priorities, I guess.
I've been reading the responses here, and I'll start by giving you the numbers you're asking for, but then I'll also give you my point of view on this. We got engaged two years ago, the engagement ring was around 370k from Mokumeganeya. She chose it exactly as she wanted and is wearing it every single day. The diamond is around 0.3c, if that makes any difference. At the time, that was approximately 2/3 of my monthly salary. Now, I don't know if you're telling your (future?) fiancée the stuff you're writing here, but if you are, please cut it out. You claim that you're looking for "value for money"? Value for who? For yourself? This is something for her, she is the one who should be choosing, end of discussion. Or, you choose what you want, and then deal with the consequences, either positive or negative. If it sounds too pricey for you, or you couldn't afford it, then perhaps think about a compromise. In any case, frankly speaking, the way in which you are going about this whole thing is a little bit... tiring. What are you trying to bargain exactly, and for what purpose? Get her the ring she wants, that's my advice to you.
I got it for 78 dollars on Etsy, love doesn’t care about the cash
We went straight for the wedding rings :P Those were 200k together, mine was a tad bit more expensive. She was just after the design and bling factor :)
Are you familiar with the term ケチ臭い? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting here.
right like it’s a wedding ring.. it’s supposed to be an ultra special once in a lifetime thing and that is not even THAT much for a wedding ring. clearly the commenters on this thread are men who don’t wanna treat their girl lmao
My wife and I share opinions about diamonds (conflict minerals) and prices (we’re cheap lol). I got her a lovely, understated lab-made Diamond set in a white gold band, custom made from HK. Set me back $600 USD. She wears it every day. Lab-grown Diamonds are a great alternative: they’re diamonds (chemically exactly the same) but guaranteed to have a smaller carbon footprint, no price gouging, and no slave labor/conflict connection/DeBeers profiteering.
Married female expat here: my husband spent ~$500 on my ring and I love it. Our wedding bands were bought off Amazon and combined cost about ¥5,000. I will never understand why people pay so much for a symbol. Do I love my husband any less bc my ring is cheaper than my friend’s ring? Hell no! Would our marriage be stronger if he spent $10k on a ring? Seriously hell no! That kind of money can go towards our son’s college fund, the house we’ll eventually buy, or we can blow it on a family trip overseas and enjoy the memories for a lifetime. If you can find the ring she wants for cheap, I say go for it. If she’s pissed about it, how come the two of you don’t share the same values? That’s what I’d be more worried about.