How To Keep An Engagement Ring Secret
Did you by chance read this TechCrunch article? A bride-to-be inadvertently spoiled her own engagement ring surprise after seeing her man-friend’s name in the tittle of an Etsy listing for a ring on her wish list. Whoops. Of course, we hope this didn’t make their engagement any less special, but we can’t fault the writer for wanting to be surprised by the actual proposal and which ring from the short list he selected. However, it wasn’t the act of buying an engagement ring online that ruined the surprise, it was the perfect storm of anticipation, mild snooping, and indiscretion. And Pinterest. Always Pinterest.
In actuality, buying an engagement ring online is not only the way of the future, it’s a better way to keep the big secret. Think about it: no one has to sneak off for a solo shopping trip. No one needs to secretly plan that they spontaneously stroll by the best jewelry store in Boca “just to look.” No one needs to telepathically communicate to the salesperson to remember this one! This one is the one! (Trust, we’re going to remember & make a note of it.) Rather, a certain nuptially inclined person can bookmark favorite engagement rings, and subtly leave said windows open to the sparklers. And, of course, a Pinterest board is still an excellent way to make a short list of inspiration (or the exact engagement ring design you want.) And it’s fairly easy not to ruin the surprise.
According to the TechCrunch piece, the author made a public pinboard so her man friend would be able to find the rings. This, of course, opened up the possibility for others to re-pin the antique engagement rings for which she’d painstakingly scoured eBay, 1st Dibs, etc. This led to panic – would some other lucky pinner snag her Old European cut first?! And with panic comes the cardinal sin of engagement ring hinting: she checked. She checked the listing, because Pinterest doesn’t say whether or not an item is still available (and had it been marked as “sold”, we’re willing to bet she still would have checked to confirm that her sweet lovely diamond had escaped to the ring finger of another.) The first rule of hinting is you do not talk about hinting check for your ring. Not in the store window. Not on the store website. Most certainly not in your partner’s sock drawer.
Now, we can’t place blame entirely on a curious lady. And not when she was just doing what many ladies do (stalk their favorite ring incessantly as though their page views will defend it from other interested parties.) We can’t even place the blame on our sweet, precious Pinterest, because they can’t possibly keep track of when their 90 googolplex pins are in stock/not. And we’re typically not the type to throw shade at fellow jewelers…but this entire spoiler could’ve been avoided by the vendor. Easily.
First of all, the dude’s name probably shouldn’t have been in the listing title. His name is Anup – pretty unique. But still, even if he’d been a Matt/Dave/Chris, that was her #1 choice ring. She’d figure out pretty quickly it was her Matt/Dave/Chris in the title. The solution? The very groom-friendly option of assigning code names. ON HOLD BLUE FALCON sounds freaking awesome. And as long as he chooses a code name she wouldn’t suspect, everyone’s golden. If code names seem like too much effort, a simple number system (On Hold #1) with names offline, safely in the store database would suffice.
Bottom line: it sucks that this proposal was slightly spoiled (if only the element of surprise). It double sucks that it could have been so easily avoided. We want every proposal to be amazing, from the purchase of the ring to “YES!” So we take the former very seriously & we think it’s unfair that buying an engagement ring online could get a bad rap from the title of this article. The takeaway isn’t that buying a ring online will be less-than. It’s that jewelers need to be on the same page as our customers, their partners in sneakiness, and their consigliere of keeping an engagement ring a big fat secret until they’re down on one knee.
