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Originally Posted by Gundo
Brownie: It shouldnt matter how much you spend on the ring, your asking her to marry you, not the jewelery. But that being said most women do like big sparkly jewelery, the ring I bought when I asked my wife to marry me set me back $4900  |
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Originally Posted by Fobulous
As for how much you should spend.. I have heard things like three months salary... but I am pretty sure my girlfriend would have killed me if I had done that... so I guess it is based on the girl.
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I agree with these comments. For mine, we bought it out from a shop in Vancouver (while I was back in Calgary, and then moved out east).
I got the band custom made, which cost me a bit more in $$ and time but was well worth it for us. We get continual compliments on it, so my wife likes it. Anyways, my point? It really depends on the girl - what they like, what they think etc. I have friends whose wife told him back then to not get anything big and expensive b/c it will overwhelm her finger and that she was marrying him, not the ring. But I've also had a friend who got the big money/big ring for the girl....they are just like that though; its what they like.
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Originally Posted by fredr123
The groom-to-be doesn't get jack out of the whole wedding thing. Nobody goes to a wedding to see the groom, you end up paying for everything, your clothes are rented for crying out loud and you can only get so excited for choosing china patterns.
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Well I agree with most of that, fredr, but....we had costs split around everywhere - me, her, my parents, her parents, grandparents, ..... guess I suckered in everybody pretty good
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Originally Posted by Sylvanfan
I actually found that Costco had good prices, but you have to take what they have there in store.
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Yeah, it seems like it...I had a friend say that when they were looking. But I believe like was said, you have to basically go with what they have.
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Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy
As for diamonds in general, the one parameter you do not want to sacrifice on is the cut. That is what will give it's sparkle (or "fire"), which at the end of the day, is the only thing that anyone notices anyways.
Colour and clarity are arbitrary, and you can get away with going lower on these two parameters - which will get you a bigger diamond for your money. For example, if you go for an ideal cut diamond with SI1 clarity and around G-H colour, you can probably get a decent sized gem for your budget.
When you start demanding high clarity or colour, you will have to pay big dollars for it, and will not necessarily enjoy the benefits of the upgrade. That is, of course, unless you are going really BIG - clarity and colour are noticable then, but if you are going big you can probably afford to pay for the upgrades required for a nice looking diamond.
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Originally Posted by jam26
This is a good point. I was recently told by a jeweler that there's a large step-up in price when you hit 1 carat. A .97 or .98 carat diamond will look like a full carat to the human eye, but you will save a substantial amount of money.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy
This is true.
When you go off the 1/4 carat scale (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, etc) you can get a better deal as well.
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I also agree with these 3 sets of comments. Really, for most people, you don't need to quabble too too much over carat size (that is the ballpark of the size you are looking at), the clarity/colour/etc stuff mentioned earlier, etc.
Have some basic parameters, but I found just having them provide me with different combinations (colour, size, clarity etc etc) worked great for me...until I basically found the right combo of everything that worked well for me.
I bolded the part above because I think that is a big part of things...be careful getting caught up in the specifics b/c there is not a huge amount of noticable difference to the naked eye...basically little to none for those not trained in looking at diamonds.
Hence, is it really worth it to pay that extra so that a trained jewller looking under a microscope will notice some imperfections, or can you get a better all-round deal when you, your wife and anybody walking down the street wouldn't be able to tell the difference?