It's best to avoid all of the commercially induced buying.
My "wife" and I have been together for 19 years, about 5 times the length of the average American marriage.
We never "married" in a church or government sanctioned ceremony, because we loved each other, and didn't need a church or government bureaucrat to "approve" our marriage.
We never bought rings. When we decided to move in together (1995), I bought her a new couch (she thought my old one was ratty), and went on a cruise, rather than blowing the money on some over priced bauble (er, diamond ring). I also bought her a mutual fund (just to get her started, she wasn't financially savvy when we met, but she learned fast).
BTW, we still have the couch, decades after many of our friends who did "traditional" marriages are divorced. It looks like crap, with about a thousand stains, and friends tell us to do the decent thing and just burn it already, lol. But I won't give up the symbol of our love so easily (okay, I'm too cheap to by a new couch, plus, our dogs love it, though I don't think any human has sat on it for 3 years).