Maybe it’s sexist of me…I would expect my daughter’s fiancé to get a ring for my daughter. If his family has a ring for him to give to her and as long as she is happy with it then it’s great. I have quite a few stones and so does my mom, but I wouldn’t offer them to the couple.
I think most couples would want to reset a diamond in a style they want, so parents shouldn’t get hurt if they wouldn’t take it as is.
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I think it depends, by the time we got engaged our finances were mixed, so technically I’d be paying half anyway. Not going to lie, had the diamond appraised before making any commitment to my grandmother’s stone, but I’d rather take the free diamond than having part of my paycheck go towards a ring (the setting cost enough).
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I agree with this. I don’t think there is any reason to wait. Just make sure you are clear you’re not pressuring or making assumptions.
My engagement and wedding band are both made from stones reset from my husbands grandmother’s jewelry. His brother used some other jewelry to have rings made for his wife. We didn’t feel pressured to use the family stones but honestly they are way nicer than what we would have been able to afford when we got married right out of college!
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Our DD has a family ring. Her husband paid to have some work done on the platinum setting, and a baguette needed to be replaced. Then he and DD worked with a jeweler to design a platinum setting wedding band. He paid 100% for that. DD was very happy to have the family ring. It came from her great grandfather.
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My husband and I got engaged without any ring - without any formal proposal for that matter. My husband had his grandfather’s ring with a diamond which he had no interest in ever wearing. After we got engaged, we went together to a diamond restyling event at Gimbals and had it reset into the engagement ring which I still wear. (If he hadn’t had that diamond I would not have gotten any ring as we were too practical and were spending all our money on a house.) Jewelers often comment on my stone, because it is an odd cut and very old.
I have two family engagement rings in my possession, my mother-in-laws and my grandmothers. I have no desire to wear them or to use them in creating something for myself at this time. I would want my daughter to use one of these (resetting however she likes) when she gets engaged. It would be a shame to have them go unused and wasteful to have her spend money on something else.
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In my family all jewelry transfer to daughters and that is what I plan to do. My son bought his wife engagement ring. Very nice ring I should say. Maybe you can offer him this stone when he is ready to propose.
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I have always been in the camp of, “family jewelry goes to daughters.” However, I have no daughters - just the one ds.
And, as a complicated wrinkle…in the past, my mil wanted to offer her engagement ring stone to ds. At the time, I adamantly refused, saying that jewelry should stay with the women of the family. My dh has one sister, and she has one daughter. So, at the time, I stated that mil’s ring should go to sil and then to her daughter. That granddaughter (our niece, ds’s cousin) now appears to identify as male, so how does that factor in??
And, the stone I would offer is more than twice the size of what mil’s stone is.
Complicated, indeed.
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That’s a good lead in to talk to your son about it. Casually mention that you have some jewelry, like his friend’s family, that he’s welcome to any time he’s ready.
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So, i only have daughters so our situation will be different. Instead of jewelry, they get sounds advice: elope. Don’t go into debt for a wedding or a rock. And keep a separate bank account. You never know. Then again, i dont like jewelry. Our monies get spent on vacations with our daughters. We will put them through college. Then hubby and i will enjoy the fruit of our labor.
As for OP, i would say don’t offer anything yet. If you really want your future dil to get jewelry from you, you can gift it later (after 10 years or so marriage, past that 7th yr bump). 
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This. My daughters and I joke about the dreaded “family ring”. Definitely don’t surprise the bride-to-be with it!
My stepmother left her wedding set to my oldest daughter. Not a style or diamond shape that she preferred (and not a huge diamond, but good quality). With my daughter’s permission, we worked with an estate jeweler and sold the set and gave the money to my then future son-in-law to put toward her engagement ring (proposal talks were in the works, but I held on to the money until after he proposed). My daughter and I agreed that this was a better option than the ring set sitting in a drawer forever.
When I was young my daddy always said, “If you will elope, I will give you $2,000 and a Volkswagen Beetle.” This was when they cost $1,999. I think he figured he’d come out ahead that way since he assumed I’d spend more than $4,000 on a wedding.
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All you can do is put your offer on the table at a time that feels right to you. What a person or couple decides to do with that offer is their call.
If a couple is about to get engaged or married then I would assume they are ready for adulthood and that means that whether or not I think they are foolish for whatever choice they make (taking a family stone, having no engagement ring, buying a new ring) it is not my business and they don’t need my opinion if they haven’t asked!
And I get family tradition, but if following family tradition gives you pause for some reason - is it really a good decision??
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I think that the ring is very personal. Unless you are the queen or princess, I think the ring should be picked out to start a new life together. I would have been very unhappy to be offered a family ring to wear. Our engagement ring was very simple and reflected a time in our life when we did not have much money (interns). That, actually to this day, is important to me.
Today people have very different feelings about diamonds and where they came from and even some prefer to use synthetics.
You never know, your son may have a daughter who may be thrilled to have jewelry passed down from her grandmother. I would save it for now.
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Ha! My dad always said, “If you elope, I’ll hold the ladder.”
Yes, keep this in mind. We discussed various views on this thread recently.
I wear a fabulous tanzanite surrounded by white sapphires. It will go to our son, but not in time for his marriage. If he ever gets around to it.
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When my husband proposed, he offered me a diamond ring in an antique white gold illusion setting that had belonged to a long-dead relative his father’s, whom my husband had not even known.
I’m not crazy about diamonds and would have preferred a colored stone in a modern, yellow gold setting-- and would have wanted to be involved in selecting it.
I accepted the ring, of course, but didn’t feel I could change the setting lest I offend my future FIL. So I spent many years wearing a ring that didn’t resonate with me and somehow didn’t feel truly mine.
After many years we replaced the ring with one more to my taste. My husband likes it more, too.
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I think the ring should definitely be discussed ahead of time. Although my diamond came from my grandmother’s ring, I picked out my setting. Good friend of ours were together 5+ years before they were engaged. Although he had a great paying job, he chose a very dimple ring with a small diamond. About a month later I noticed she was wearing a much larger ring. There are just so many different opinions not to have a conversation.
I don’t think this has been mentioned but I believed you had mentioned above that he has not dated a lot and this is the first girl he has mentioned. I believe that if it’s brought up now even in the most non chalant way it would be sending a message that you think this is the one.
Tread lightly.
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Maybe I’m seeing this from my perspective. My mil, her engagement ring was one from her mil. They didn’t have much money and so it was the ring they could afford at the time.
When I was engaged, my husband and I picked out the ring together. There was no asking my dad, a big engagement photo op. Just two people deciding to get married. There was no family ring so that wasn’t an option.
My sister in law, it was a surprise but she didn’t like the setting my bil picked out so she had it reset. My husband was against that, get the ring you want, I don’t want to redo a ring. Like I say, maybe it was different times.
My kids, their stories are different also. Both have been working, their SO’s have been working. They lived together. They are older.
The thing I keep hearing here is that we didn’t have money, the diamond was appreciated. But our kids are waiting longer to get married, they have money, they’ve lived together for a while. Not every story is the same.
I would definitely not say anything to someone in a newish relationship. The odds are that you have plenty of time to talk about a family stone in the future.
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I think accepting a diamond that you can set however you like to make something you want, is very different from taking a ring and having to wear that ring. I know if I wore my Mother-in-law’s ring it would feel wrong to me, but if I took the diamond and made something in my taste from it, it would feel great.
The politics, ethics, and environmental concerns around real diamonds is something our kid’s generation feel strongly about. So wouldn’t reusing something be a practical solution to those issues?
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I like this response. I think love is a little too strong…but I guess “like” is no longer an option!