| For most of her life, Nivi Achanta imagined slipping a diamond ring onto her left hand to mark her engagement. So friends and family were a bit surprised when she pedaled home on the Avail AR 1, an iridescent purple endurance bike "ideal for venturing further and riding longer." "My parents are taking it … not amazingly," she says. "But they've become more supportive of who I am." Who she is, Achanta realized, is someone happier riding an engagement bike than wearing a diamond ring — putting her at odds with an estimated 85 percent of brides in the United States. After picking out her engagement bike, Achanta began to question a lot of assumptions about what she "should" buy for her wedding. Much of it, she found, wasn't right for her. This week I looked at how rethinking the way we celebrate events from weddings to graduations allows us to suss out what is meaningful and what needlessly increases consumption — and environmental impact — without making us happier. This is what I found out: Diamond engagement rings are not traditional. Only about 10 percent of engagement rings in Western countries featured diamonds in the 1940s. One of the world's largest diamond mining companies, De Beers Group, cemented it as sign of commitment with the marketing campaign "A Diamond is Forever." Expensive weddings don't lead to marital bliss. The opposite is true. With some caveats, the more money couples spend, the less likely their marriage will succeed, according to a 2015 study in the journal Economic Inquiry. "Wedding industry advertising has fueled the norm that spending large amounts on the engagement ring and wedding is an indication of commitment or is helpful for a marriage to be successful," says Hugo Mialon, a co-author and professor of economics at Emory University in Atlanta. "But we find that they are inversely correlated." Eschewing traditions is hard, but it can be worth it. For Achanta, abandoning the idea of an engagement ring was like pulling out a Jenga block, sending a lot of other blocks tumbling down and revealing what was worth spending money on. "None of this feels like a sacrifice to me," she says of her wedding choices. So if happiness — or a long marriage — is what you're after, it's worth asking if the objects in certain rituals are special for you — or special for a mining company with excellent marketing. Read this week's Climate Coach column to learn more. | 
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