The World Gold Market and Your wedding rings

Update! March 23, 2026: Gold prices see a pullback. Analysts note that this is due to rising oil prices, making oil the current safe-haven bid. While the gold market can fluctuate significantly analysts still expect the overall upward trend to continue.

This blog post was written April 21, 2025. The info is still useful and applies to ordering the metal for your workshop. I will aim keep a more current update at the top of the post.

This post covers:

What impacts the price of gold and why it is rising.
Locking in your gold price
Ordering gold for your scheduled workshop
Preordering gold to plan ahead
Info on the cost of other precious metals

Why is Gold on the rise?

Update January 2026: 100 year price chart for the cost of gold.

At the time of writing this post the price of gold is on a steep incline. No one knows for sure, but currently the cost is projected to continue to rise. (You can check your trusted news source to find the most up-to-date info for projections as this is developing daily.) Gold has been considered highly valuable for thousands of years. It always has its highs and lows, but historically the long term trend has been upward.

The world gold market is always impacted by economic and political world events, supply and demand, the strength of the dollar, interest rates and more. Many couples have recently asked me bout the impact of tariffs on gold. While tariffs do not directly contribute to the cost of gold they will influence its value due to their broader impact on the global economic and political landscape.

Gold is known as a safe-haven asset. In times of trade uncertainty or economic instability, many investors look to safe-haven assets like gold. This impacts supply and demand, driving up the price. The price of gold you see in the metal market is based on 1oz of pure, 24k gold. Your rings will contain just a fraction of this.

I am not sharing this to be an alarmist, but so that my clients can make informed decisions about their rings and have control where they are able. As a very small business I am navigating the market in real time with you. I always like to keep my pricing transparent with my clients, so I am planning to keep my clients at the forefront of my mind as the market continues to shift.

Locking in your gold price

I am offering my clients the option to lock in their gold price at any point.

After booking your workshop, you can fill out the fabrication metal order form, confirm the details, and pay your metal balance to lock in your price before gold climbs higher.
I aim to keep the prices on my website up to date to reflect the higher end of gold's current fluctuations. The refiner's rate is based on the London Second Fix rate on the day your metal ships, not the day it is ordered, since they need to weigh the final product.
If the refiner's rate of gold drops for your order, a lower price will be reflected on your final invoice. In other words: you might pay less than your locked-in rate, but you'll never pay more for your gold once you have paid that payment.
Your workshop fee will be added to your invoice the week of your appointment. Any costs for engravings or additional elements will be added once those steps are complete.

Ordering your metal

Example of metal stock next to finished rings.

The metal you make your rings from starts as milled stock. This is considered a manufactured material made by a US based refiner. After booking your workshop you will fill out a metal order form, based on your metal color, karat, width, shape and size. If you are unsure of what you would like I recommend going to a big chain jewelry store where you can try on a variety of rings and see what you like on your hand. You can find lots of helpful links on my site for filling out your metal order:

Planning Ahead

I have had a handful of clients over the years who wanted to propose with their raw gold stock and then book their workshop after proposing. This could be a good option for couples who know they want to make their rings with me sometime down the road and want to lock in their gold price now.

Please reach out to me if this is something that you are interested in.

Other Precious metals

10 year price chart for platinum and palladium

Palladium white gold has always been higher in price than the other gold alloys that I offer. It is still the higher alloy, but at the time of writing this is much closer in price to other gold alloys than in past years. This is because unlike gold, with its historical long term upward trend, palladium tends to fluctuate more and is currently on the lower end. This is also due to economic and political world events, supply and demand, etc. But palladium is not often looked to as a safe-haven asset the way that gold is. To give you an idea of swings in the market; when I started my business over a decade ago palladium was half the price of platinum, by the early 2020s palladium was more than twice the price of platinum! At the time of writing this they are about the same.

immeasurable

The precious metal market always has a level of inherent risk and volatility, meaning that we don’t know if it will be higher or lower the next day, week, or month. It might help to know that many of my past couples have shared that the metal purchase is more than a financial investment. It will become more precious than the material itself. It will become your wedding rings that you will wear as a reminder of your commitment for the rest of your lives. Add in the value of making them with your own hands, definitely worth more than their weight in gold (pun intended).

Thank you for your support in my small business. -Stephanie Selle