Wedding rings began as down payments, not tokens of eternal love
The 1549 Book of Common Prayer had the groom say 'with this ring I thee wed' and then hand over a leather purse of gold and silver coins. Long before it symbolised devotion, the wedding ring marked a transfer of valuables, a relic of an age when marriage was a contract between families.
The Western custom reaches back to ancient Greece and Rome, where rings were linked first to the dowry and only later to a promise of faithfulness. Some old formulas were bluntly conditional. One German vow offered the ring as a sign of the promised marriage, provided the bride's father supplied a portion of 1000 Reichsthalers, roughly 20 kilograms of silver. The modern exchange grew out of medieval European Christian practice, and the habit of wearing the band on the left ring finger follows the 1662 prayer book, bolstered by the old idea of a vena amoris, a vein of love.
Designs have carried their own stories. In the 16th and 17th centuries European couples used the gimmel ring, two interlocking bands worn separately by bride and groom during the engagement and joined at the wedding. Renaissance poesy rings were silver bands engraved with a short verse. A popular legend claims Middle Eastern husbands gave puzzle rings that would fall apart if removed, exposing an unfaithful wife, though in reality such rings slip off intact.
Customs vary widely. In Germany and Austria the wedding ring goes on the right hand, as it does in Poland, Bulgaria and Russia, and Eastern Orthodox couples also traditionally wear it on the right. In Greece the defining act of marriage is not the rings at all but the crowning. Some Hindu women wear a toe ring called a bichiya, while in West Bengal married women wear an iron bangle known as a loha. Romanian couples add silver rings on their 25th anniversary.
History has squeezed the ring too. In 1942 Britain's wartime rules limited utility wedding rings to two pennyweights, just over 3 grams, in 9 carat gold instead of the traditional 22, stamped with a special mark like a pair of empty brackets. Some Methodist churches, following John Wesley's warning against adornment with gold, left out the ring ceremony altogether.
Source: Wedding ring
