Picking out an engagement ring can be a stressful (not to mention expensive) decision for many brides-to-be. For the indecisive among us, then, inheriting a family stone instead is the perfect way to skirt the process altogether. But what if the ring isn't actually an heirloom? One woman lived to tell the tale and later shared it on Reddit, explaining that the fake jewelry came from her future mother-in-law.
"I (29F) recently got engaged to my fiancé (30M)," she wrote. "His mom insisted on giving me a 'family heirloom' engagement ring, her great-grandmother’s. I was touched. It was a beautiful vintage-style ruby ring."
Everything was fine until the bride-to-be offered to have the ring cleaned and appraised before resizing. "She got weirdly cagey about it. Said 'just wear it as-is, resizing will ruin it,'" the woman wrote. "Well, curiosity won. I took it to a jeweler. It was a $29.99 fake from Walmart’s fashion section. Literally plated brass with glass."
"I laughed so hard I cried," she admitted.
The mother-in-law's son, meanwhile, was "furious," especially because his brother's ex-girlfriend was given a real family heirloom shortly before the pair broke up. When the original poster and her fiancé confronted the mother, however, she went into "full victim mode."
Her excuse for the fake ring? "I didn’t think she’d appreciate the real one!"
It was the "pettiest betrayal" the woman had ever experienced, she wrote. And while the couple is still going ahead with their engagement, the bride-to-be assured her readers that she would be purchasing "her own damn ring."
"And I’ll probably be wearing it with my middle finger," she concluded.