It’s not uncommon for Bachelor winners or Bachelorette leads to slip a Neil Lane diamond on their finger during the finale of their respective seasons — but how many former contestants get to keep their rings? Us Weekly has rounded up the answers, Bachelor Nation.
There are two ways for Bachelor Nation members to keep the engagement ring gifted to them by the ABC series. Make it down the aisle … or stay engaged for at least two years. So who do they give it back to?
During a 2016 interview with StyleCaster, Neil quipped that the diamonds go to “ring heaven” if the couple doesn’t last.
“After they get the ring, I don’t have a say in it, and what happens after that, I don’t know,” he said. “I do make these rings with a great deal of passion — I have my whole staff working on them, with a lot of romance involved. And we hope it lasts forever. And surprisingly, there are some that are doing amazingly well.”
Us has learned that there are exceptions to the two-year rule, however. Season 6 Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky revealed on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast in 2020 that producers came to collect her engagement ring after her 2011 split from Roberto Martinez — but she refused to hand it over.
“[We were together for] 18 months and the reason I know that so well is because I remember they wanted to, like, take my engagement ring away. And I was like, ‘No, this is part of my history, like, this is mine, you cannot have it!’” Ali recalled. “Per the contract, it was supposed to be two years, but they let me keep it.”
While the former reality TV star is now happily married to Kevin Manno, with whom she shares daughter Molly and son Riley, Ali admitted she was “emotionally distraught” from the breakup at the time.
“I was like, ‘You’re not taking this from me, like, I’m keeping it.’ I put my foot down,” she told Us. “And then they were fine with it. They understood when I, like, broke it down.”
Scroll through for more on history on what happens to the rings after a Bachelor split:
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