Flashy engagement rings have long been par for the course among betrothed A-listers, but lately it feels like they’ve been getting bigger. Much bigger.
Last month, the Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo proposed to his longtime girlfriend Georgina Rodríguez with an oval diamond large enough to obstruct half her knuckle.
With an estimated weight of 25 to 35 carats, the gem swamped Rodríguez’s finger and sparked criticism online for its inordinate size.
And it isn’t the only supersized stone to draw headlines this year.
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While officially engaged since 2023, Lauren Sanchez Bezos gave the world its first real glimpse of her ring at a wedding party in Venice in June.
Whisked across the Venetian canals on a private water taxi, Sanchez Bezos’ rare pink diamond (worth an estimated $3 million to $5 million, and somewhere in the proximity of 30 carats) didn’t so much catch the light but grabbed it out of the sky with a hefty gravitational pull.
Now, Taylor Swift has joined the fray with her mine-cut antique diamond engagement ring – though the singer’s rock likely weighs a more modest seven to 10 carats, according to jewellery experts.
The ring was reportedly designed by Swift’s fiancé Travis Kelce in collaboration with jeweller Kindred Lubeck, founder of the New York-based brand Artifex Fine.
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“This isn’t somebody who just went into the shop and said ‘I want the biggest diamond,'” said Garret Weldon, president of the Irish Antique Dealers Association and owner of the Dublin-based jeweller, Weldon.
Weldon described the elongated cushion-cut diamond worn by Swift as “the Holy Grail in this business” because it is “one of the rarest stones you can get.”
The gem, he observed, likely dates back to the 18th or early 19th century.
“At that time, there was very little mechanisation of the mining process, so you had to wait for nature to weather the stone out of a rock face” – or for a landslide, or other natural means, to bring the diamond to the surface, he said, making it “rare, unusual and special.”
Yet despite the nuanced beauty of the piece, for many it is the size that strikes first.
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In the US, the average engagement ring is around 1 carat, though it may be as high as 1.7 carats, according to wedding planning service The Knot.
Swift’s ring, meanwhile, covers at least half of the bottom third of her finger, and is around double the estimated weight of Zendaya’s – albeit still huge – engagement ring and up to 10 times that of Charli XCX.
“Before, it was exclusively monarchs who could afford really, really large gems. Now it’s very different”
But compared to Rodríguez’s and Sanchez Bezos’ gems, it is arguably understated.
“This is a very wearable size,” said Weldon, “It’s not wider than her finger; it’s not touching the knuckle at the top of her finger.”
‘Our societal rituals around proposals have really changed’
While supersized gems have long appealed to celebrities (remember the whopping 33.19-carat diamond ring Richard Burton romantically gifted to his wife Elizabeth Taylor?) they appear to have become even more pervasive.
“Big stones have always conveyed status, romance, excess,” said Charlie Boyd, the digital jewellery and watches editor at Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.
“I think it’s more that where we’re seeing those stones has really changed. Before, it was exclusively monarchs who could afford really, really large gems. Now it’s very different.
“We have a completely different economic landscape. We have Silicon Valley tycoons and tech moguls and celebrities.”
For Boyd, these giant diamonds are also more visible today, thanks to the advent of social media platforms like Instagram, where they can be posted for the world to ogle.
The rise of the “ring shot,” too, has created warped expectations of size, Boyd added.
“Our societal rituals around proposals have really changed because of social media. It’s extremely rare now that a couple gets engaged and there isn’t a ‘ring shot,’ often posted across multiple platforms.”
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But more than just keeping up appearances, technological advancements have made carving bigger stones far easier than a century ago, jewellers are no longer solely cutting rough diamonds by hand.
“Now, if a jeweller or a diamantaire obtains a large rough, you are then assessing that stone digitally,” Boyd said.
“You can cut the stone to give the biggest yield.”
A ‘flash-first aesthetic’
As much as fashion or visual art, ring design is a reflection of society and the era it hails from. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for instance, rings were “very art nouveau styled,” said Weldon.
So how will future generations interpret supersized engagement rings such as those worn by Rodríguez and Sanchez Bezos? Dominated by a central stone, these rings are not about artistry or flare, Weldon argued.
“There are only so many ways you can safely and elegantly display a very large stone in a ring context,” he said.
“You run out of road.”
Boyd calls the trend for large stones a “flash-first aesthetic” – one that usually involves a wispy metal band, typically set in platinum.
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“Minimal metal means the more you see your diamonds, the more light goes into the stone,” making it “look even bigger,” she said.
Diamond engagement rings only started becoming mainstream in the US in the 1940s, despite the seminal 1947 De Beers advert proclaiming that “diamonds are forever.”
Today, however, proposing with a ring is practically embedded in the institution of marriage – and a tradition that is rarely skipped.
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But if the trend for XXL diamonds continues, the engagement ring may transform from something enjoyed publicly to a piece appreciated in private.
An engagement ring may be “a talisman to that particular moment” that you want to have “with you always,” as Weldon put it, but the inconvenience – and in some cases, danger – of extra large jewels may instead see them stored away in a safe place, rather than worn every day.
“Is she getting in and out of the car? Is she trying to find something at the bottom of her purse? And is this ring so large that it’s actually going to obstruct and hinder that?” said Weldon.
Boyd notes that “diamond shrinkage syndrome” – where a diamond appears smaller over time due to growing familiarity with their stone – may see seemingly impractical rings enter daily use.
This phenomenon may also explain why supersized engagement rings have become increasingly normalised, Boyd added.
“The more we wear them, the more we become accustomed to them,” she said.
“Suddenly, they don’t feel that big anymore.”
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