Another knockout ring wound up dissolving the engagement of a pair whose ?nancial histories were very different: She owned her home and other investments, and was completely self-suf?cient; he still rented and was nowhere near ?nancially stable. So when the man spent literally every penny he had on the ring, his ?ancée couldn't see it as a symbol of his love. Instead, it came to represent an insurmountable incompatibility, a future full of unwise ?nancial decisions and, quite possibly, struggle.

Engagement-ring tension played out in an entirely different fashion for a third couple. He gave her his grandmother's diamond in a new setting, a decision on which his parents consulted. "Let's call them a very traditional East Coast family," says the bride, who hails from Texas and absolutely loathed the ring. "It wasn't me. I was thrilled that he had proposed, but after the dust settled, I told him, 'I really do want to marry you, but I don't want to wear this ring for the rest of my life.'"

It says a lot about her husband that he didn't quibble. "It's hard to tell your ?ancé that you don't love what he's just given you," she admits. "I think it hurt his feelings a little bit, but he was willing to do what it took to make me happy. He put me in front of his parents' desires."

Since her husband-to-be was only making $18,000 a year, and she was unemployed at the time, she had to wait almost two years for her dream ring-a Harry Winston platinum band with a pear-shaped diamond and two little baguettes-which he bought at an estate jewelry store and presented to her on the day of her ?nal wedding-dress ?tting.

Ten years later, though, the ring she drooled over doesn't ?t her life. (Partly because she has a young daughter she's afraid of scratching, and partly, well, just because. "When we go out with friends, I feel obliged to wear my rings, but I truly don't think much about them otherwise," she says.) Her wrist does the talking now. She wears two Cartier "love bracelets," gifts from her husband. "They literally screw on-it comes with a gold screw-driver. They're really special, and anyone who recognizes them knows that they are only given by a signi?cant other."