Pearl Jewelry has an older association with love, going back to the ancient Hindus, Chinese, and then Greeks and on to the Romans. Pearls were prominent during the Renaissance in all of Europe. All the way to the present when pearl jewelry has had a renaissance of its own. The ancient Hindus gave and associated pearls with love and marriage. The Greeks also associated pearls with the bride. The famous story, Cleopatra dissolved a pearl in wine and drank it as a bet to Antony. Her pearl was said to be worth a fortune. The Romans prized pearls over all other gems. And of course one very famous pearl associated with love, started when Spain who financed most of her explorations with the pearls found in the Caribbean. La Peregrina (The Pilgrim), a huge natural pearl, made its way to Spain's national treasury, then on to Mary Queen of Scots. This pearl of love was given to Elizabeth Taylor by Richard Burton, who respectively, played the two lovers Cleopatra and Antony.
The story of Valentine's Day, as one version goes, was started when an early Christian priest in pagan Rome, resisted the Roman practice of a lottery that assigned a young woman to a young man for a year. This practice was supposedly started because a married man was not a good soldier. Anyway Valentine preached against this horrid practice, and was soon imprisoned, and scheduled to be executed. While in prison he was befriended by one of the guards. This guard had a blind daughter, who the story goes was cured of her blindness by Valentine. After curing her blindness he fell in love with her. Before the execution he began to write notes to her signing them "from your Valentine". And that is how the act of sending cards on Valentine's Day and signing them with "from your Valentine" got started.
And for both for these reasons that pearl jewelry and Valentine's Day are synonymous with love.
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