What Makes an Engagement Ring Romantic?

We call ours The Most Romantic Engagement Rings in the World.

It's a big claim for a jewellery atelier in Niagara, so I think we owe people an explanation.

Start with what we mean by romance.

To me, romance means love, excitement and deep connection between people. In fiction, a romance is also a love story that moves towards a hopeful ending.

An engagement ring happens to sit beautifully inside both ways of thinking.

It is supposed to express how two people feel about each other, but it also becomes part of the story of their relationship. It marks the moment when two people who cannot possibly know what the next fifty years will look like decide they would like to spend them together.

If we're going to talk about making the most romantic engagement rings in the world, that's where I think we have to begin.

Not with carat weight.

Not with price.

Not even with the jewellery.

With the two people.

Romance requires paying attention

There is something very romantic about knowing someone well.

You know the story she tells more often than the others. You know the places that matter to her. You notice the jewellery she wears every day and the piece from her grandmother that she would never part with.

You know which flower she likes. The trip you still talk about. The restaurant you went to at the beginning. The ridiculous thing the two of you find funny that would make absolutely no sense to anybody else.

Those details matter to me as a designer because they give us somewhere to begin.

At Lessard Coutu, we don't have to turn every memory into a literal symbol on a ring. In fact, I don't think we should. Good design is not a scrapbook.

But once you understand a couple, you can make decisions for a reason.

A curve can come from somewhere.

A hidden detail can mean something.

A stone can be chosen because of more than its measurements.

Something can be placed underneath the centre diamond knowing almost nobody will ever see it.

I quite like that last one.

Romance doesn't always need an audience.

An engagement ring is an unusually optimistic object

The literary meaning might be even more interesting.

Romance fiction points towards an optimistic ending.

Think about what someone is actually doing when they propose marriage. They are making an enormous commitment to a future they have not lived yet.

There may be houses they haven't bought. Problems they haven't had. Trips they haven't taken. People they haven't met. There may be children who don't exist yet and versions of themselves they would barely recognize today.

And the proposal says: I would like you there for all of it.

I find that romantic.

The ring becomes the physical object attached to that decision.

That gives us a fairly high standard for what the ring ought to be.

Beautiful isn't the same thing as romantic

We've been making jewellery since 1990, and I care a great deal about making beautiful things.

But beauty and romance aren't interchangeable.

A diamond can be spectacular without knowing anything about the person wearing it.

The craftsmanship can be exceptional. The proportions can be beautiful. The materials can be rare and expensive.

All of that can make an excellent piece of jewellery.

It doesn't automatically make it personal.

What interests me much more is whether someone can look at that ring twenty years later and see more than the ring.

Can it take them back to the proposal?

Can it remind them why a certain detail is there?

Can they remember making decisions about it before their partner even knew it existed?

Can something in the ring still feel private between the two of them?

That is a different design problem.

And I think it's a better one.

A good engagement ring should become more romantic

There is another quality of engagement rings that I don't think we talk about enough.

They can improve with age.

Not physically, necessarily. Gold scratches. Polished surfaces change. Prongs eventually need attention.

I mean emotionally.

On the day an engagement ring is given, much of its meaning is still prospective. It represents what two people hope is going to happen.

Ten years later, some of that hope has become history.

Thirty years later, the ring may have been present through homes, children, careers, deaths, celebrations, frightening phone calls, reconciliations, Sunday mornings and thousands of completely ordinary days.

The diamond is the same diamond.

The ring may look much as it did when it left our shop.

But it can mean far more.

I love that about jewellery.

Many things are at their most exciting when they are new. A meaningful piece of jewellery has the chance to move in the other direction.

That should affect the way we design it.

What our standard means

We aren't claiming that we have access to a secret category of diamond.

We aren't saying romance can be measured in carats.

We certainly can't manufacture love at a jewellery bench.

What we can do is take the romantic purpose of the engagement ring seriously.

If romance involves love, excitement and deep connection, the process of making the ring should contain those things.

If romance is also a story about two people, then something about those two people should find its way into the ring.

And if an engagement is such a hopeful decision, the object attached to it deserves careful thought.

That is what The Most Romantic Engagement Rings in the World means to us.

It's the standard we're trying to hold ourselves to.

With more than thirty years of ring making behind our atelier, I increasingly believe the most important material we work with isn't gold or diamond.

It's everything the ring is supposed to help someone remember.

Read the companion article: The Next Frontier of Engagement Rings Is Experience.

If you would like us to design a ring around the two of you, explore our engagement ring experience.