Engagement rings are worn by a woman on the ring finger of her left hand in most Western societies. The ring indicates to others that the woman is engaged to be married. In some countries, for example Poland, the woman wears the ring on her right hand. Whilst traditionally it is the woman who wears the engagement ring, in the US and Canada it is slowly becoming more popular for the woman to buy her fiancé an engagement ring.

Although historically engagement rings were a simple slain ring of either gold or silver, their modern counterparts are generally set in diamond. The trend for diamond engagement rings may have been set as far back as 1477 by the Archduke Maximillian of Hamburg when he gave a diamond betrothal ring to Mary of Burgundy.

From 1880 onwards, the diamond De Beers diamond experts were able to control the supply and therefore the price of the diamonds until the 1920’s and 30’s right through the great depression when the demand dropped dramatically by up to 50%. They had to come up with a successful plan to stop this figure falling further. They came up with what was to be one of the most successful and well known slogans of the 20^th century; “A diamond is forever”. This in turn made the diamond engagement ring popular. With marriage meant to be forever, it was a symbol of the loyalty and love from a man to his fiancé.

The diamond is the most expensive gem available and this expensive made way for another campaign by De Beers. They started telling people to hold onto diamonds and diamond rings as they were valuable family heirlooms. This resulted in a large demand for diamonds as old diamonds were no longer being released back into the market so people were in need of new diamond rings.

So all in all diamond engagement rings really became popular due a very successful advertising campaign.