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Sumo-
The double months salary thing was invented as an advertising campaign for De Beers
Once spent 2 months salary on a Tiffany ring. When the relationship ended (before the wedding) I managed to get £800 for the value of the diamond and platinum. And that was mates rates. The markup for brands is insane. On that level at least, a well chosen watch makes much more sense!
Stonehedge
I worked in a jewelers when I was (I think) 18 (which is a long time ago).
Advice we were told to give was to spend (IIRC) twice your monthly salary on the engagement ring, which always struck me as nakedly avaricious - nothing about what style etc, just the raw £ as the judgement.
But, it’s an easy metric - the number of people who came in saying “right, I have to spend twice my salary, so lets look at that one” and seemed relieved that they weren’t expected to make an aesthetic judgement was in the region of 100%.