Engagement ring

Jump said:
Fabien, you're in Birmingham so go to the jewellery quarter (Marlows is good)

I did loads of research before buying my Mrs engagement ring and saved about £1500.
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Yep, I would say do this. Plenty of places to shop around there
 
i have this dilema right now ,,,hhmmmm what engagement ring to buy the ol lady ,,,,,mind you we got married in 1984 ,,,so *u** it ,,,dont think i'll bother now :lol:
 
suzie picked her engagement ring from ernest jones, we had a few problems with it though which meant it kept loosing stones, and it went back 3 times before they finally said they couldnt do anything more with it and they would have to replace it with a different design, they gave her an allowance for the new ring whcih was twice the original value, a discount on our wedding rings and she got to keep the original ring as well, we felt we got good service from them (although by the end it we knew pretty much every member of staff quite well)
oh and to top of the story she took the original ring to an independant jeweler who fixed it for our wedding day!
 
Hi
Thanks all for your comments and stories, i didn't expect people to get that much interest.

When i started to read i started to get confused but i am going to keep it simple, a second hand ring for the proposal, but go together afterwards to buy the real one. Something she will be happy to wear.
 
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fabphoto said:
Hi
Thanks all for your comments and stories, i didn't expect people to get that much interest.

When i started to read i started to get confused but i am going to keep it simple, a second hand ring for the proposal, but go together afterwards to buy the real one. Something she will be happy to wear.
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what I would say to that is a lot of women would become very attached to the ring you propose with and would then not want another ring so I would say go down a route of proposing with something that is obviously not a ring to keep if you get my drift? handcraft something out of wood or twine so she can keep it but then get proper ring. If you spend out on a 'cheap/secondhand' dud ring then she may want to keep it.

Also, if you go shopping together, it might be worth popping in to the shop you are going to and mentioning your price range etc beforehand , the shop will then produce rings in that range for her to look at. ( a good shop should usually take you aside and ask this but just in case, could not think of anything worse than her falling in love with 'the perfect ring' only to find you would need to sell both kidneys and a leg to fund it!!! )
 
Buy the best you can afford, and feel free to ask me, the clues in my name
 
Very spooky seeing this thread tonight, as I've been out today and got an engagement ring for my better half :0)

Aiming for a Christmas Day proposal ;0)
 
seashaker said:
what I would say to that is a lot of women would become very attached to the ring you propose with and would then not want another ring so I would say go down a route of proposing with something that is obviously not a ring to keep if you get my drift? handcraft something out of wood or twine so she can keep it but then get proper ring. If you spend out on a 'cheap/secondhand' dud ring then she may want to keep it.

Also, if you go shopping together, it might be worth popping in to the shop you are going to and mentioning your price range etc beforehand , the shop will then produce rings in that range for her to look at. ( a good shop should usually take you aside and ask this but just in case, could not think of anything worse than her falling in love with 'the perfect ring' only to find you would need to sell both kidneys and a leg to fund it!!! )
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^^ This is good advice IMO :thumbs:
 
I feel a little sorry for my husband. I saw the one I liked in H Samuel and tore it out of the brochure and put it in his wallet :lol:

If he'd have spent 3 months wages on it, I would have been very miffed at the needless expense.
 
j3w3ll3r said:
Buy the best you can afford, and feel free to ask me, the clues in my name
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Hardly surprising from a Jeweller? :D

Both of us hated the idea of following the rules of pointless baubles, as prescribed by the vendors of pointless baubles. The idea of retaining or appreciating in value is daft when something is of sufficient sentimental value to ensure it won't ever be sold... something that won't be sold has no monetary value IMO.

I (foolishly) insisted she had to have a token, as that's what society has hammered into me since I was young, as is the case with most people I assume, so we went with something that was meaningful to us...

... We sealed the deal with this...

Engagement Trumpet!

Sam's Trumpet by NickD71, on Flickr
 
NickD said:
Hardly surprising from a Jeweller? :D
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Did you read my post.....

Buy the best you can afford, I meant buy the best quality ring as oppose to a bigger crappy quality ring
 
j3w3ll3r said:
Did you read my post.....

Buy the best you can afford, I meant buy the best quality ring as oppose to a bigger crappy quality ring
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Yes, I did... and that's exactly what I meant!
 
kelack said:
If he'd have spent 3 months wages on it, I would have been very miffed at the needless expense.
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My girlfriend has told me this as well, thankfully. "If you throw away that much money on something so silly, I'll be pretty ****ed."

Have to wonder about people spending so long researching diamonds, and what's supposedly makes a 'good' diamond. If you have to spend so long working it out, what are the chances your Mrs is going to know the difference?

I doubt mine /hers when the time comes will have a diamond in it. Mainly because it's almost impossible to trace the life of a diamond and to know for sure someone, or some environment, wasn't completely screwed over in order to get it to you. But also because a diamond has zero meaning to either of us, so why would I drop so much cash on one? :cuckoo:
 
I got my missus a 6 diamond eternity ring last aniversary - £65

Silver and manufactured diamonds - its the future :lol:

she loves it , and thats all that matters - she wouldnt have loved it 'more' if i'd dropped 3k as its the thought thast counts not the monetary worth
 
Jayst84 said:
My girlfriend has told me this as well, thankfully. "If you throw away that much money on something so silly, I'll be pretty ****ed."

Have to wonder about people spending so long researching diamonds, and what's supposedly makes a 'good' diamond. If you have to spend so long working it out, what are the chances your Mrs is going to know the difference?

I doubt mine /hers when the time comes will have a diamond in it. Mainly because it's almost impossible to trace the life of a diamond and to know for sure someone, or some environment, wasn't completely screwed over in order to get it to you. But also because a diamond has zero meaning to either of us, so why would I drop so much cash on one? :cuckoo:
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If a diamond means nothing to you or your partner then there is no problem with that,

Personally, I spent a long while looking as I had no idea about diamonds or the difference in quality. If I charged straight in and bought the first pretty ring I saw in run of the mill high street shop, firstly it would have not meant anything to me, ( I got a lot out of the entire process of studying up on diamonds) I would also have a lower quality stone.

There is a vast difference between stones and there is a visible difference in colour between the best quality and lesser quality stones.

The Kimberley process was introduced to take out 'blood diamonds' from the chain of sale but you are right, I so not know the full environmental cost. But then I would argue that almost every product you will ever own will have an environmental cost to it and along the way someone would have been ripped off so that is taking it slightly off course to me.

In a nutshell, you always buy the best camera equipment you can as the quality will almost certainly be better than a cheaper piece of equipment. same goes for all things in life.
 
i just let my missus choose hers... she already had a good idea what she wanted, so i didn't see the point in sticking my oar in. That was back in the day when i was minted :gag: so i wasn't fussed. She went for a 1.3ct bruiser at £3.5k... let's just say i was well looked after for a good while :naughty:

Having said that, neither of us were fussed about a big white wedding, so we just legged it off to Mauritius for 3 weeks on our own to get wed and had a knees up for friends / family when we got back.
 
seashaker said:
.. I would also have a lower quality stone.

There is a vast difference between stones and there is a visible difference in colour between the best quality and lesser quality stones.
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There is, but did you know that before all the research, is my point. If you had what you are told is a lower quality stone, would you have cared if you loved the look of it? You may have (unknowingly) compared it to a stone priced at 5 times the value, but preferred the look of the "cheap" stone.

seashaker said:
The Kimberley process was introduced to take out 'blood diamonds' from the chain of sale
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It is far from fool proof.

seashaker said:
but you are right, I so not know the full environmental cost. But then I would argue that almost every product you will ever own will have an environmental cost to it and along the way someone would have been ripped off so that is taking it slightly off course to me.
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Every product will, but you can limit your impact through your choices, especially on non-essential and luxury items.

seashaker said:
In a nutshell, you always buy the best camera equipment you can as the quality will almost certainly be better than a cheaper piece of equipment. same goes for all things in life.
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I buy the gear I need to do my job, and spend money where I know I will see benefits. If I knew nothing about diamonds, but wanted one for some reason, I would buy the one I liked, not the one De Beers told me was the best. It's a purely aesthetic choice, so should be 100% personal. :thumbs:
 
Thinking about it I also know a guy who when he proposed to his girlfreind was stony broke - there was no way he could afford a decent ring , so he spent 3 months carving her a celtic love spoon by hand - and gave her that as a token of their engagement (on top of a mountain in snowdonia. (the weding was in the local village hall, his mum baked the cake, her mum made the dress, and the wedding ring was a family heirloom - I did the photography - total budget for the wedding under 1k. Honeymoon was spent backpacking in scotland.)

That was 15 years ago, and they are still happily married today (with 2 kids), and she still has the lovespoon framed on the wall - she couldnt care less about the monetary worth itsd the sentiment and the personal input that made/makes it special.

At roughly the same time,another freind spent over 2k on engagement rings, flew his girl freind to new york to propose, spent over 10k on a wedding, and another shedload of cash on a honeymoon in mauritius, and the relationship went south within a year and they divorced shortly afterwards - not entirely unconnected to her seeing money as the most important thing in life.
 
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I proposed to my wife in India on a holiday to Goa. I knew about the jewellers over there so had it all planned.

I then told her how much cash I had in mind and off she went with sister in law to the jewellers, opening briefcases of diamonds and inspecting them with magnifying glasses alongside their certificates. she then decided the ring design she wanted and had it made.

The ring was valued 3x on our return for insurance so we had a two week holiday eating the best curries ever with an engagement ring with cash to spare on a high street bought equivalent.

We still get an Xmas card every year from the jeweller.

Edit, when there you get to compare colours, quality and see the impact it has on the price, was a really good learning curve.
 
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bought my 2nd wifes engagement ring from a multi jewllery store in Hatton Garden.we both wanted her to have something a bit special and art-deco in style.we we walked around there for hours looking and trying on around 20 from various sellers before shortlisting 3 rings.after some haggling i saved £500 on a 24ct gold £2000 'used but mint' art-deco period diamond ring which came with an insurance valuation certificate for £5,500.i considered i had got a superb value purchase as the quality was stunning and my fiance was utterly thrilled which made me very happy
my 2nd marriage to her only lasted 3 years and she returned the ring and wedding ring to me when we broke up,after holding onto it for a further 3 years i put it into auction with a auction house with their recommended reserve of £2000.it was sold for £3,200 - 10% auction seller fee.it would appear that when i bought the ring in Hatton Garden i really had got it at what must have been a very low profit sale for the shop,and they definatly knew there stuff.
i would absolutely recommend anyone trying out Hatton Gardens Jewellers for something completely different from the 'norm'
 
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