Last week, we discussed who gets the ring if an engagement is broken off. But what do you do with the ring if you get to keep it? It’s not like you can wear it on another finger—engagement rings are just a little too distinctive-looking. Well, Dita Von Teese took her diamond from former husband Marilyn Manson and had Christian Dior make it into an even more gorgeous ring. “It’s nice; it’s big. I feel like I suffered greatly for that diamond, and it needed to be reborn into something better.” [NY Times]

Engagements are all congratulatory wishes and bridal showers until they end without a wedding. Along with the usual breakup activities—“dividing of things,” “starting over of lives”—there’s the even more awkward “deciding of who gets to keep the 10-karat (or 1-karat) ring.” According to a Conde Nast Bridal Media study, the average engagement ring cost is $4,435, so this ain’t chump change. We ask two people in the wedding industry who gets to keep the rock, after the jump, and then ask you to take a position in the comments.

Some men get really creative when it comes to proposing marriage. My dad, for example, had a restaurant freeze my mother’s engagement ring in an ice cube and put it in her water glass. Luckily, she isn’t one of those people who likes to chew on ice. Well, Hajji, a London man, wanted his proposal to be truly spectacular, and he concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon so that he could literally pop the question. An unfortunate turn of events followed. A gust of wind blew the balloon out of his hand. Hajji spent two hours searching for the ring-filled balloon, but he finally had to break the news to his girlfriend. After hearing that he lost her engagement ring, the Hajji’s girlfriend was pissed. “Now she is refusing to speak to me until I get her a new ring,” he said. She sounds kind of like a diva, Hajii, maybe you should pick up a new girl instead of a new ring. Unless you have $12,000 more to blow away. [Reuters]

Engaged people can be obnoxious. That’s what I thought before I was engaged, and it’s what I think now that I am. For starters, engagements are by definition a lil’ flashy. Literally speaking, there’s the ring. I was always noticing women wearing big rocks, little rocks, enviable rocks, ugly rocks (Pear shaped diamonds?! Patooey!), when I would ride the subway. Sometimes I would find the bragginess of a big ol’ diamond annoying and contemptible. So now I turn my ring around on the way to work so I just look like a married lady with a wedding band.

Last week we showed you that video of the guy proposing to (and getting turned down by) his girlfriend at the basketball game and it made us wonder what the heck he was going to do with the ring. Most guys aren’t Brandon Walsh with a disposable income—remember, Brandon proposed to Kelly, but she said, “I choose me”, so he kept the ring as a token of what a bitch she was—so we’ve always assumed they, like, returned it. Not so! According to one guy, Joshua Opperman, his jeweler told him that the ring could be bought back at 32% of its original cost. So he decided to take matters into his own hands and started “I Do…Now I Don’t”, an auction site where other rejected bachelors can hawk their rings to guys looking to propose to their girlfriends. Great business idea, sure, but aren’t the rings kind of…tainted by the original recipients rejection? [I Do…Now I Don’t]