Dear Prudence,
My ex-husband surprised me with a really extravagant engagement ring. We married less than a year into our engagement. Eight months later we separated, and after living on opposite coasts for two years with very little contact, we divorced. No hard feelings, but it didn’t end well, and we don’t keep in touch. Fast forward several years and my current boyfriend and I are talking about marriage but are not officially engaged yet. We’re both pretty practical, so I suggested reusing my old engagement ring and wedding band. I love the set and barely got to wear it. I also don’t have any strong emotions surrounding it. It’s just a beautiful set that has been sitting in a drawer collecting dust for years. My boyfriend initially liked the idea and seemed relieved since we have a million other things on which our money would be better spent.
The problem is that our friends and my family have declared that this is “creepy” and bad luck. My mom told my sister that she thinks my boyfriend is being a “cheapo” and that it’s tacky to reuse a diamond. I feel like this is an overreaction, but now my boyfriend is beginning to feel self-conscious about all the criticism, which is unfairly being lobbed at him considering this was my idea. We’ve agreed that we definitely want to wear rings when we get married, and although we can buy something else for less, I want to wear it, and free fits our budget. I won’t say this to him in case we go another way, but I also worry that I’ll always look down at a new ring and think longingly about the eye-popping beauty going to waste in the drawer. I feel like that’s worse than reclaiming an ex’s ring. What say you? Would you feel creeped out by hearing a friend say they were recycling a bridal set?
—It’s Just a Pretty Rock