When you and your spouse-to-be stand at the altar at your wedding venue, surrounded by friends and family members and exchange rings, you’ll be following in the footsteps of couples dating back thousands and thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians exchanged rings, and some argue that even cave-dwelling people had a version of them.
The wedding ring, like the wedding dress, wedding cake, and bouquet, is one of our most time-honored wedding traditions.
What is a wedding band and what does the wedding ring symbolize?
While the look of wedding bands has evolved considerably over the years, wedding ring symbolism, for the most part, has been steadfast. Wedding rings represent ongoing love, devotion, and commitment.
As a recent blog by UK-based jeweler, Diamonds Factory, says, “Wedding rings symbolise eternal love and commitment within a relationship. This emblem of love is exchanged between two people on their wedding day and worn to show the world they are married.”
Here’s a look at the origin of marriage rings and how your wedding band might have looked had you lived in another era.
Historical Rings: Ancient Times…And Earlier
People have been wearing and exchanging rings for as long as…there have been people. The first rings, some historians say, were twigs and reeds that Neanderthals wrapped around their fingers.
One of the earliest civilizations to assign symbolism to rings was Egypt. No, we’re not necessarily talking about Egyptian wedding rings, but Pharaohs did wear eternity rings. The circular shape of a ring was (and is) a perfect symbol for eternity: It has no beginning or end. Another plus in the eyes of the Egyptians: Eternity rings were the same shape as the sun and moon, celestial bodies worshipped in their culture.
If you were a pharaoh, your ring might have resembled a snake swallowing its tail.
But everyday people wore rings, too. According to a blog by With These Rings, Egyptians exchanged "rings of love.” These early bands were made from woven reeds, leather, bone, or ivory.
By the way, the idea of a ring finger has ties to Egypt as well. Egyptians believed the fourth finger on the left hand contained a “vein of love” that led to the heart.
Ancient Greece and Rome
We can thank Alexander the Great for the spread of ring-exchanging into Europe. After he conquered Egypt, Greeks took an interest in the rings Egyptians wore, and over time, Greek lovers began exchanging rings as a symbol of devotion. Some of the Greek rings showed off an image of Eros, or Cupid, the god of love.
After another conquest, in this case, Rome over Greece, rings got another significant boost in popularity—and began to be associated specifically with marriage. Romans began crafting rings of iron and copper and incorporating them into the wedding ceremony. Gradually, the metal of choice for wedding bands became yellow gold.
If you were a Roman bride in the third or fourth century CE, you may have worn a fede, which displayed two right hands holding each other to symbolize friendship and marriage.
Asian Civilizations
You could say Romans approached rings with a sense of romance, but that wasn’t the case for all cultures. Early Asian civilizations, for example, saw rings as a visible legal contract between a man and a woman.
“Remarkably, couples would seal their marriage with puzzle wedding rings, which would immediately fall apart if they tried to remove them from their fingers,” Sophie Pettit wrote for Expatica, a guide for English-speaking expatriates and internationals. “The wedding ring was therefore used as a way to expose infidelity. After all, if one of the partners removed it in the absence of the other, they would soon find out about it.”
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Rings were a key element of wedding ceremonies in Medieval Europe, according to jeweler Brilliant Earth.
“In the 1100s the Pope dictated that marriages celebrated in Catholic churches should include a ring in the ceremony, and the Greek Orthodox church began ring-based wedding ceremonies in the 1300s,” a Brilliant Earth blog says.
Also during this era, people had their wedding rings set with precious gems. Europeans chose rubies to represent passion, while sapphires represented the heavens, and cut diamonds were symbols of strength.
In the 15th century, posy, or posie, rings displaying a short verse of poetry came into fashion. Later, the ring inscriptions became more personal.
“This forced goldsmiths to advance their techniques and learn to engrave on the inside of the rings to keep these messages private and close to the wearer,” With These Rings wrote. “This shows a shift, from marriage often being an agreement between families, when an ornate ring signified a more profitable arrangement, to marriages founded in love, with simple rings formed from gold coins, bearing inscriptions like ‘Love me and leave me not’ and ‘Two bodies, one heart.’”
The Roman fede retained its popularity in Medieval Europe, too, according to the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), and in the 1600s, their motif began to be incorporated into gimmel rings with two or three interlocking bands.
“Lovers each wore a band during the engagement period,” a GIA article explains. “During the wedding ceremony, the groom placed his band on the bride’s finger, uniting the wedding bands into a matched set. The complete ring showed two right hands clasped together.”
Also in the 1600s, the fede image of clasping hands evolved a bit to show two hands holding a heart.
Across the sea, American colonialists continued the tradition of exchanging wedding tokens to symbolize their love, sometimes with a twist. Puritan husbands, for example, often gave their brides a thimble
Jewish Ceremonial Marriage Rings
Wedding rings have played an important role in the Jewish wedding ceremony over the centuries as well.
Jewish ceremonial marriage rings, which were used roughly from the 10th century through the 19th century, were quite elaborate, and some even displayed a tiny roof representing the couple’s home or temple. These rings opened like a locket and often displayed a Hebrew inscription. These rings were often shared by towns for all Jewish weddings held there.
Today, traditional Jewish wedding rings are often a simple metal circle—typically gold—with no gemstones or embellishments.
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
Wedding rings continued to hold significance in the colonial era of America, albeit with unique twists reflecting the cultural contexts of the time.
Colonialists exchanged wedding tokens as symbols of their love and commitment, often with quaint variations. For instance, Puritan husbands were known to gift their brides with thimbles instead of traditional rings. Despite the simplicity of these tokens, they held deep sentimental value within the context of marriage.
As the colonies evolved, so did the tradition of exchanging wedding rings. Goldsmiths crafted bands of varying designs, sometimes incorporating motifs emblematic of the era's values and aspirations. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the motifs on wedding rings became more diverse, reflecting the changing social landscape of colonial America. While some rings featured intricate engravings or gemstone embellishments, others bore simple yet elegant designs, serving as enduring symbols of love and commitment in the New World.
In addition to their symbolic significance, wedding rings in colonial America also served practical purposes. They were often considered tangible representations of marital vows and legal contracts, reinforcing the bonds of matrimony within the community. Even so, the exchange of rings during wedding ceremonies became a cherished tradition, symbolizing unity, fidelity, and the promise of a shared future.
A New Tradition in Some Regions
In some areas of the world, the tradition of exchanging wedding rings is a relatively recent development.
In Saudi Arabia, for example, wedding rings appeared less than 100 years ago as Western sentiments began influencing the culture.
“The ring as a gift is permissible; it is the competition in how expensive, how big, and how showy the ring is which is looked down upon in Islam,” an article in Alarabiya News states.
The Victorian Era
Wedding rings did indeed become more lavish over the centuries, and more affordable with the discoveries of gold and precious gems around the world in the 1800s.
Victorian-era (1837-1901) wedding rings in the United States and Europe typically were made of gold and often featured such gemstones as sapphires, rubies, amethyst, garnet, chalcedony, topaz, pearls, Brilliant Earth says.
And, the serpent rings popular in the age of pharaohs made a comeback after Queen Victoria’s groom, Prince Albert, gave her a snake engagement ring.
Twentieth Century and Beyond
From the 1900s to the 1930s, Art Deco wedding bands were all the rage. This style emphasized geometric shapes.
The Art Deco period influenced art, architecture, home decor, fashion, and, yes, jewelry.
Another bit of ring history: For centuries, in many cultures, wedding rings were worn only by women. That changed during World War II, Pettitt wrote for Expatica, and we started seeing more and more “his and hers” matching wedding rings.
“(Men) began to wear wedding rings as a means of carrying their loved ones with them. This was particularly poignant given that they didn’t know if they would ever be reunited.”
Today, his and hers wedding rings are part of wedding ceremonies around the world, but with cultural differences.
For example, the ring is worn on the left hand in most countries where English is spoken, while people in many Orthodox Christian and Eastern European cultures wear their wedding ring on the right.
A relatively recent wedding ring tradition is to wear three rings. A trio ring set includes an engagement ring between a wedding band and a third ring.
In some cases, husbands present the third ring to their wives on their first wedding anniversary. These rings also have been given to the wife after she gave birth to the couple’s first child.
Some say the 3 band wedding ring meaning is past, present, and future. In other cases, a couple decided to go with trio wedding rings to symbolize their commitment to God.
And we haven’t even touched on the tradition of the diamond engagement ring—which is popular in the U.S. and England but not universally—or matching couple wedding rings or bridal set rings.
We most likely will see rings and wedding traditions continue to evolve, but hopefully, the significance of a wedding ring, its symbolism, and its ties to love and commitment will remain firmly in place.
The Bell Tower on 34th, an elegant wedding and event venue in Houston, TX, is committed to helping couples realize their wedding vision.
Learn more about holding a wedding here.
The Bell Tower on 34th
901 W 34th St, Houston, TX 77018
(713) 868-2355