Of course before there can be a wedding, there has to be an engagement. The tradition of giving a ring as a symbol of a promise can be traced back thousands of years. The biblical book of Genesis includes the story of the Pharaoh giving a ring to Joseph in order to formalize an agreement. Despite this tradition, for hundreds of years many happy couples married without any physical symbol of their promise.
Although the Italians of the Middle Ages were the first to give diamond engagement rings, diamonds only became the standard in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Ironically their popularity grew, in part, due to their relative low cost after the discovery of large diamond deposits in South Africa in 1870. In 1947, after the economic hardships of the Great Depression and World War II resulted in a dramatic drop in diamond purchases, the DeBeers company launched it's famous "A Diamond Is Forever" campaign which solidified the diamond as the engagement ring of choice. At the same time, jewelers subtly began to encourage men to spend two months' salary on the ring, although one wedding authority warned that "Only a foolish girl, perhaps only a silly one, is willing to accept an engagement ring that is more costly than is warranted by the financial circumstances of the man she is to marry..."
