• Choose Your Wedding Band Style

• Decide Between Gold and Platinum Wedding Bands

• Select Your Wedding Band Setting

• Find Wedding Bands on eBay

• Buy Wedding Bands With Confidence

Choose Your Wedding Band Style

Choose Your Wedding Band Style

Your wedding band should appropriately represent your love and be an item you can wear with pride. When you embark on your exciting and emotional purchasing journey, consider wedding bands that fit your personal taste and budget.

Take time to talk with one another and share your thoughts and wishes before you start to shop. Do you want matching wedding bands or do you want a ring that reflects your personal style? Do you want your wedding bands to match your engagement ring? Do you have a cultural tradition you want to follow with your wedding bands? What type of wedding ring would look best on your hand?

Embrace your culture

When you slip a wedding band onto your new spouse's ring finger for the first time, you may want it to hold both cultural and emotional significance. Popular cultural traditions include:

• Irish Claddagh rings: The heart in a claddagh ring symbolizes love, while the crown denotes eternity and the clasped hands mean friendship.    

• Jewish wedding bands: The traditional Jewish wedding band is a plain, unbroken gold circle that represents a pure and eternal union.     

• Russian wedding rings: Russian wedding rings have three interlocking bands that represent the Holy Trinity. Each band may be a different shade of gold: rose gold, white gold, or yellow gold.    

• Traditional wedding bands: Early Egyptians thought wedding bands created a never-ending circle of love that carried over to the afterlife. The tradition of wearing a band on the third finger started with the ancient Greeks, who thought a vein linked that finger directly to the heart. Later, around the time of Pope Nicolas I, it came to mean a legal and binding agreement as well. Today’s traditional Western wedding bands stem from both ancient Egyptian and Greek beliefs, representing a spiritual (or religious) and legal commitment between two people.

Decide Between Gold and Platinum Wedding Bands

Decide Between Gold and Platinum Wedding Bands

Most wedding bands come in gold or platinum, which can both be brushed or polished. Brushed gold wedding bands or brushed platinum wedding bands provide a more muted, modern look, while polished precious metals offers a more classic look. The bride's engagement ring may dictate which metal you choose for your wedding bands. However, no selection rules apply, so feel free to mix and match different colors of gold or try a different metal entirely for your wedding bands. Be as creative or as traditional as you like.

Select gold wedding bands

Gold wedding bands, the traditional rings of choice for marrying men and women, come in several colors. You'll find yellow gold wedding bands, white gold wedding bands, and rose gold wedding bands on eBay. The warm look of yellow gold is an appealing choice for darker skin tones. Rings made of platinum or white gold can nicely complement fairer skin tones. Couples often choose white gold wedding bands as an alternative to platinum wedding bands because they look similar, but often cost less.

Gold in its purest form is very soft. To make pure gold more strong and durable, jewelry manufacturers mix gold with other metals, such as nickel, zinc, and copper. You can tell how much gold a piece of jewelry contains by looking at how many karats it has. As karat weight increases, price, color vibrancy, and purity also increase. However, durability decreases.

• 24K gold wedding bands: Pure 24-karat (24K) gold has a rich color, but can bend with daily wear.    

• 18K gold wedding bands: 18-karat (18K) gold is 75-percent pure and offers more durability than 24K.    

• 14K gold wedding bands: Couples often choose sturdy 14-karat (14K) gold wedding bands for their durability and lower cost.

Choose platinum wedding bands

Platinum wedding bands are definitely en vogue again, with an increasing number of brides and grooms opting for this highly durable and dense precious metal. Though more expensive than gold, platinum weighs 60 percent more than gold, making it more difficult to bend or break, and more resistant to damage. Platinum also typically retains its luster longer than gold. Platinum was the precious metal du jour in America in the early 1900s, so you’ll find a range of antique and estate wedding rings made of this particular metal.

For more information on precious metals, please read our Precious Metals Buying Guide.

Select Your Wedding Band Setting

Select Your Wedding Band Setting

Simple metal wedding bands don't have to be as traditional or simple as they sound. You could choose a modern band with a flatter surface and squared edges, or maybe you’d like a dual-tone (or dual-metal) wedding band. You may even like an etched wedding band, textured wedding band, or engraved wedding band.

If you decide to go for the look of a diamond wedding band or other gemstone-encrusted band that has emeralds, rubies, or sapphires, select a setting that appeals to you. A ring may use prongs to hold a single gemstone, or several gemstones, in place on top of the ring. For eternity bands, you'll need to decide how you want gemstones to appear around the entire band.

• Shared prong settings: Shared prong settings use grooved metal wire to hold gemstones in place side by side.

• Channel settings: Diamonds or gemstones in a channel setting seem to be set side by side directly into the metal. No metal shows between the stones. In a bar channel setting, some metal is visible on the sides of the stones.    

• Pavé settings: Holes are drilled into the ring to create a pavé setting. Then, small jewels (usually diamonds) are set into the holes. The entire surface of the ring sparkles with a “paving” of gemstones.

Complement your hand

When buying a wedding band, or any type of ring, you may want to choose a style that echoes the shape of your hand. Basically, people with larger, wider hands can more easily wear larger bands with large stones and multi-levels than people with more narrow or petite hands. A delicate or narrow wedding band may look out of place on a larger hand, while a chunky band with large stones may look too gaudy on a small hand. Rings are three-dimensional, so take height into consideration as well. A slender finger wearing a ring with a tall setting can look very graceful.

Find Wedding Bands on eBay

Find Wedding Bands on eBay

If you know what type of wedding band you want, go to the Jewelry & Watches portal, click the Bands, Wedding & Anniversary link under Rings, and start searching for items on eBay.

• Engagement & Wedding Jewelry Hub: Browse and be inspired by Wedding Bands on the Engagement & Wedding Jewelry Hub. You can view a large selection of bands for men and women, as well as diamond anniversary bands and many different styles of diamond engagement rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and watches.

• Categories: The Categories list on the left side of each page will help you narrow down your listings by item type. For example, the Bands, Wedding & Anniversary Categories list contains links for Men and Women. As you dig deeper into the site, you'll also be able to narrow down your choice by metal.     

• Keyword search: Search eBay listing titles for specific words. For example, if you want to find a platinum wedding band for your fiancée, type "women’s platinum wedding band" (without quotation marks) into the Search box. Click "Search title and description" to expand your results. Visit eBay's Search Tips page for more tips on searching with keywords.

If you can't find exactly what you want, try shopping eBay Stores, tell the eBay Community what you want by creating a post on Want It Now, or save a search on My eBay and eBay will email you when a match becomes available.

Buy Wedding Bands With Confidence

Buy Wedding Bands With Confidence

Before making your purchase, make sure you know exactly what you're buying, research your seller, and understand how eBay and PayPal protect you.

Know your purchase

Carefully read the details in item listings.

• Figure delivery costs into your final price. If you spend a lot of money, make sure the seller will insure the item when it ships.

• If you want more information, ask by clicking the "Ask seller a question" link under the seller's profile.

• Always make sure to complete your transaction on eBay (with a bid, Buy It Now, or Best Offer). Transactions conducted outside of eBay are not covered by eBay protection programs.

• Never pay for your eBay item using instant cash wire transfer services through Western Union or MoneyGram. These payment methods are unsafe when paying someone you do not know.

Know your seller

Research your seller so you feel positive and secure about every transaction.

• What is the seller's Feedback rating? How many transactions have they completed? What percentage of positive responses do they have?

• What do buyers say in their Feedback? Did the seller receive praise?

• Most top eBay sellers operate like retail stores and have return policies. Do they offer a money-back guarantee? What are the terms and conditions?

Buyer protection

In the unlikely event that a problem arises during your transaction, eBay and PayPal are there for you.

• Pay safely with PayPal: PayPal enables you to pay without the seller ever seeing your bank account or credit card numbers. In fact, PayPal protects buyers 100% against unauthorized payments from their accounts. Plus, with PayPal Buyer Protection, your purchase can be covered up to $1,000.

• eBay Security & Resolution Center: Visit the Security & Resolution Center to learn how to protect your account and use eBay's quick and efficient resolution tools.