That Wife Wanted a Cubic Z?

[Jezebel]

Wasn't ThatWife the one who had to persuade her husband to marry her by using a Power Point presentation?

If so, I can see her insisting that she really wanted a modest ring, or a CZ.

As for diamonds, they aren't rare at all. The only reason they are so expensive when bought new is because the DeBeers cartel keeps the market supply and prices artificially inflated. If a CZ is "fake," so is the monetary value of a diamond. Just try to sell a diamond ring--if you find a jeweler who will buy it at all, you'll get a fraction of the wholesale price.

So for me, personally? I have no problem with lab-created stones. I'm tall, and yes, I do want bigger stones than I could afford if I bought natural ones--small ones just disappear on me. And by choosing "fake bling" I have a nice pair of "emerald" earrings that aren't microscopic or milky-green.

[icecreamycakeycake]

My 1st engagement ring was a cluster of small diamonds on a very wide 14kt yellow gold band (it was the 80's, that's what most of my peers wound up with, musta been an 80's thing?)

A couple of years ago, my husband 'upgraded' my ring.

I had stopped wearing it because it was so dated appearing (small cluster on yellow gold, white gold is in now). He snuck it from my jewelry box and had it re-worked: had the old head cut off, had a new one put on, complete with a large diamond solitaire (around a carat and a half). Had it polished and it looks amazing, better than new!

He presented it to me on Xmas eve. I wear it every day now, even though it's not the current 'in' white gold. I'm over the moon about my 'new' ring!

If you want white gold take it to a jeweler and have it rodium plated, it will look just like white. It should cost under $50. ALL white gold is rhodium plated, while it's alloyed differently that yellow, it's still yellow (although lighter than 14k or 18k), and it's the plating on top that makes it look white.

[ilovetchotchkes]

Why is does not having a diamond mean it's "fake bling", and why is that bad? I hate that the diamond industry has made it a requirement to spend a lot of money on a diamond for an engagement ring when there are much less expensive options that look just as good. I would prefer not to have a real diamond, personally. I think ideally I'd have a lab-made sapphire as the main stone.

And men are "supposed" to spend three months salary on an engagement ring, whatever that means to them.

I have a lab created sapphire in mine, which is great because I got a HUMONGOUS stone. My mother refers to it as "the Rock". Which.... cost about a months salary of my husband's but he was working a $7 an hour dead end job at the time. :P

I think if she wanted a CZ, ok, fine! but I think really it was a ploy to make T.H. buy a ring because she was afraid it (the marriage) wouldn't happen or something, so "cheaping out" was a way to suck him in further. (maybe i'm not making any sense. I've got a terrible headache)

[zoestercoaster]

My 1st engagement ring was a cluster of small diamonds on a very wide 14kt yellow gold band (it was the 80's, that's what most of my peers wound up with, musta been an 80's thing?)

When I was engaged to my fundie-ex my ring was three rows of very tiny diamonds in... silver? I can't remember what metal it was. It was really very pretty. These days, I wouldn't want a diamond ring but what I had was very pretty.

[EmmieJ]

I requested, and received, a lab-created diamond as my engagement ring. I had several reasons: I'm very frugal, DaBeers & their false inflation of diamond values can kiss my @$$, and I didn't want to worry that some poor kid in an African mining village go their leg chopped off so I could wear a rock.

I used to really want a nice diamond ring, until I started learning more about the mining process and exploitation of labor, then I decided I could easily live without it.

I have a few special rings; one is an antique onyx and silver ring I got when I graduated from college, another is a handmade gold and coral ring a long ago boyfriend made for me.

[Creampuff]

When my wife and I got our engagement rings six years ago, gold was freakishly cheap. I had three large garnets (one red, one purple, one mandarin) in white gold and my wife had a lovely (Canadian) diamond with triangle peridots on either side. I think that both rings, together, cost under $2,000 - not bad for two brides-worth of bling!

Two years or so after we were married, my engagement ring was stolen - and when we went back to our jewelry designer to see about getting me a new ring, we found out that the garnets were still very reasonable but the price of gold was astronomically higher. It would have cost three times as much to get a ring that was half the size of my first one. I didn't want to spend that much on a ring, so we decided to let it go.

Then yesterday, my wife told me that we had a mystery appointment - and she took me to the jewelry designer. It turns out my wife has been saving all the little bits and bobs of money she makes on various online hobbies for the last two years so that she could surprise me with a new ring. BEST. WIFE. EVER.

[icecreamycakeycake]

When my wife and I got our engagement rings six years ago, gold was freakishly cheap. I had three large garnets (one red, one purple, one mandarin) in white gold and my wife had a lovely (Canadian) diamond with triangle peridots on either side. I think that both rings, together, cost under $2,000 - not bad for two brides-worth of bling!

Two years or so after we were married, my engagement ring was stolen - and when we went back to our jewelry designer to see about getting me a new ring, we found out that the garnets were still very reasonable but the price of gold was astronomically higher. It would have cost three times as much to get a ring that was half the size of my first one. I didn't want to spend that much on a ring, so we decided to let it go.

Then yesterday, my wife told me that we had a mystery appointment - and she took me to the jewelry designer. It turns out my wife has been saving all the little bits and bobs of money she makes on various online hobbies for the last two years so that she could surprise me with a new ring. BEST. WIFE. EVER.

Did you hyperventilate at the price of gold? :o

[DarkAnts]

BEST. WIFE. EVER.

:clap: :dance:

[Lainey]

Lainey, you and I have very similar taste. I love all of them.

My boyfriend and I are planning on getting engaged in the next year or so. When he told me how much he thought he should spend I was shocked, I talked him down a lot. He's got a great job but I just finished grad school, am unemployed and have some student loan debt. Besides I'm not taking the subway with a five figured piece of jewelry. :shock: Those huge things just scream "mug me" and there's something just wrong (to me) about wearing the equivalent of a car on my hand. I made him a pinterest board of some reasonable stuff that I like and now I wait.

I'm already married, and I just started a Pinterest board with this stuff! So pretty... (my husband calls me "Magpie" sometimes because of my love of shiny/sparkly things). If we have similar tastes, you'll probably love this website as much as I do: http://www.jewelocean.com/ I just found it today, googling around (I'm in full-on shopping mode now). Check out this sexy specimen: http://www.jewelocean.com/product_detai ... od_id=1576

[Creampuff]

[quote="icecreamycakeycake"

Did you hyperventilate at the price of gold?

[Lainey]

In red is what you're missing.

[Stickers]

Fun fact: zirconia is the second hardest material we know of next to diamonds, and it happens to be the stone I considered having my engagement ring fashioned out of (then we found an antique one that I loved so I didn’t go with the zirconia).

I think she's thinking of Moissanite. It's a 9 to 9.5 on the Mohs scale. CZ is like a 7 or 8. I dig Moissanite, it's more refractive (aka more sparkly) then a diamond and it's cheaper :)

[Soldevi]

I didn't want any stones on my rings. Here it is typical that engagement rings are identical in style and usually plain gold rings and engagement rings are worn by both men and women. And then in wedding day women (nowadays some men, too) get their wedding ring which is usually more elaborate one but rarely American type with huge gemstones. There are usually diamonds or other gemstones but they are smaller and stone setting is not protruding type. And a lot, lot cheaper. In 2009 the average price for rings in Finland was 300 euros and I found another figure from 2007 newspaper article where they said that typical price for a wedding ring is around 800 euros.

These are very popular choices for wedding and engagement rings here: http://www.kalevalakoru.fi/korut/kuvastovihki/sormukset

Mine cost 150 euros (plain barrel-cut gold ring) and IIRC 260 euros (patterned barrel-cut gold ring). I am getting the third ring, so-called child ring which is usually given when first baby arrives and it is traditional to get and set in the ring as many gemstones as there are children. Yeah, some kind of payment, lol. But nowadays it is also typical to get that ring and have stones for example after 10 years or whatever the couple decides. Diamonds are wasted on me because I want colourful stones. I have been polishing stones like spectrolite and made jewellery of them as a hobby and I am always thrilled about colours. White diamonds are so...boring and coloured ones too expensive.

But I do love to read and watch documents about gemstones. There was just two part document about European and Russian royal jewellery. Oh, so beautiful.

[Kaylee]

Since this is vaguely related, does anyone have titanium rings? How do they hold up?

I've done the series of rings, too. My husband had a set of rings he'd bought years before (he was engaged in his late teens & his mom caused them to break up, but they were way too small for me. He wanted to surprise me when he proposed, so he bought me a gold band with a small diamond (5pt or .05 carat). We got our actual wedding bands at a 90% discount from a jewler that was going out of business, so we spent about $60 total for 2 plain gold bands. I'm not into bling, so that was fine, except I also am not very fond of gold and I feel like it clashes when almost all of the other metal jewelry I wear is silver or white gold. I've been looking for an excuse to get a new ring, without bringing it up in a way that would hurt his feelings.

He lost his ring about 2 years ago (I think his dad's girlfriend may have stolen it while they were visiting, because some other things came up missing at the same time, but that's a whole other story). We've talked about getting new rings and maybe a matched set, but I waited for a while because I wanted to see if our marriage would last long enough to make it worth it = shit got really bad for a while, but we're doing pretty good now. He brought it up again a month or so ago, and told me to pick out some I like, so these are what we will be getting if we have a large enough tax refund:

We'd talked about getting some with runic engraving, but the nice-looking ones we found were even more expensive than the titanium ones above, and I love the cable inlay and sort of industrial look on those.

[Austin]

Meh, I have lots of diamonds and I don't wear them any more. I wear a wedding band that my husband had made for me 14 years ago that has a trillion cut stone of each of our birthstones. My birthstone happens to be a diamond, so that's the only diamond I wear. His is a topaz and they do look pretty cool together.

To be completely honest, the whole idea of an engagement ring turns me off (just my opinion). What exactly is it supposed to represent? That I belong to someone? That my man loves me sooooo much he got me this great big diamond? I don't know exactly why, but it just creeps me out.

Anyway, I own all these diamonds b/c I worked in a jewelry store one part-time when my kids were little, and employees could buy pieces ridiculously cheap. The mark-up on this stuff is like 500%. The whole two-four months salary that a man should spend is just a clever piece of marketing by DeBeers. If a woman bases if she will marry a man on having anything whatsoever to do with the ring, he should run like hell.

I hope my sons or my daughters-in-law will want these diamonds, because they can have them. The boys can split them up and do whatever they want with them.

[Funky Chicken]

Here's a recent couple who've obviously dodged bullets (each other - I suspect he's a liar and also possibly rationalizing being a cheapskate (I wonder if his rationale about blood diamonds was to give him an excuse. To buy something like a CZ), and she's obviously an incredible materialist!):

http://blogs.news.com.au/bossy/index.php/news/comments/was_it_fair_she_dumped_me_because_i_gave_her_a_fake_diamond/

[antifundie]

Before we got engaged, the husband said he didn't like diamonds--they were too traditional. I didn't like that so much since I like traditional things, but after awhile thought that an emerald or pearl would be cool. Anyways, when it came time to look for rings (after we decided to get married and booked a place and called my parents--all in the same day), we ended up at the mall stores, where our budget ($500-1000) was sneered at. They tried to jam a 1/4 carat diamond set down our throats because it was on super sale. It was a good deal but it was ugly.

We went to a national jewelry store where the saleslady said "no problem!" when told our budget and showed us rings that were actually in that range--some $600ish, some more, but it wasn't like they were all $999.99, you know?

Anyway, by that time I realized that a pearl or emerald wouldn't hold up to daily wear, so while we looked at a couple of diamonds, we also looked at a green sapphire and blue sapphires. I ended up with a blue sapphire ring which I adore and which (before tax and what not) cost $595. And, I am proud to say, my husband paid cash for it, with his debit card, from his checking account. It's not that we're rolling in money it's just he manages it well. I do like to joke that my ring was more expensive than his car though--he drove a beater that was $400.

He bought his own wedding bands (2 of them) off of Amazon, and they were $30 each. He likes both and wears one during the week and one on the weekends, lol. They look pretty much the same unless you look really closely to see the design.

I bought a plain white gold band for a wedding band--my "set" is mismatched, but I love it. I wanted a plain, small wedding band.

My ring looks like this--only a ring, obv., and the band has little diamonds:

http://www.shaneco.com/Catalog/ProductD ... White+Gold

That's where we got my ring. Highly recommend, as their salespeople are awesome.

[donks]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I love it even though it's out of style now. At the risk of sounding lame, it's still the band he slipped on my finger when I said yes. We could have sold the setting and those tiny diamonds, but didn't. They will go to our son when he finds the right girl. If she doesn't like them, then I will have to suggest she might not actually be the 'right' one.

They were good enough for me as a starter ring, they should be good enough for anyone imo!

[nimerha]

My girlfriend and I are getting engaged this year - no surprise about it, we've been discussing the timing for a couple years now, and we've been looking at rings a lot for the past few months. It's interesting figuring out what we wanna do about various wedding traditions since we're a) two brides and b) different backgrounds - she's Indian-American and I central European.

We're both getting an engagement ring and a wedding band, and going to wear both. I've been so disappointed by the selection of engagement rings online - there's like, five styles to pick from and all are pretty much look the same to me, so I just started skipping the "engagement" category altogether and started looking in "regular" rings, and find much more interesting, beautiful and glamorous rings there, what gives? I want to like my ring (I'll be looking at it for the rest of my life), and for it to be durable (see above: rest of my life) and practical (I work with my hands and probably always will), all requirements beyond that seem pretty silly to me.

I will never understand blowing 10k USD on a piece of jewelry (unless of course you're rich enough that all your jewels are in the same price range). But then I also don't understand one partner picking the ring, spending the money and surprising the other one with it - I want to pick my sparklies myself, thank you very much :)

[clibbyjo]

If you want white gold take it to a jeweler and have it rodium plated, it will look just like white. It should cost under $50. ALL white gold is rhodium plated, while it's alloyed differently that yellow, it's still yellow (although lighter than 14k or 18k), and it's the plating on top that makes it look white.

OMG, I need to do this!! First,I need to find my engagement ring. :? Its gold and I quit wearing it when I went off gold and onto white gold.Its lost somewhere in this house.

[donks]

Raine, my husband and I actually have a couple of titanium bands, too! We bought a matching set at a convention, i rarely wear mine, but he wears his all the time, and he's rough on jewelry. It has held up great for 3 years now!

[Kaylee]

Raine, my husband and I actually have a couple of titanium bands, too! We bought a matching set at a convention, i rarely wear mine, but he wears his all the time, and he's rough on jewelry. It has held up great for 3 years now!

Great - that's one thing I disliked with the gold. He works as a machinist in a furniture factory, so his ring was scarred all to hell before it got lost. My band was pretty scratched up too from work and stuff (part of the reason we opted for the simple band instead of re-sizing the ones he had was that I knew I'd end up knocking the stones out of the setting - well, that and I didn't want a ring that had been bought for some other woman).

While those aren't super expensive, as wedding rings go, it's still a lot of money for us and I want to be sure they'll hold up.

[Tee-Tee]

My husband and I considered titanium for his wedding band; however, he was told by his EMT/firefighter brother that titanium was difficult to cut off in case of an accident involving ones hands. (This could be total crap, I'm honestly not sure, but we ended up with gold as result.)

Semi-related story: I read in a random on-line story of a soldier in Iraq that was the victim of a roadside bombing which involved his left-ring finger. The fellow was recently married and the surgeon told him he'd lose his finger if the medical staff didn't cut off his ring. He refused to cut the ring and lost his finger! To top it off, I believe they lost the ring... After reading it, I told my husband to not think twice about chopping that ring in a million bits should something happen!

[LucySnowe]

Tee-Tee - ouch! Yeah, one of the reasons I went for inexpensive rings is because, yes, they're symbolic, and I'd be really unhappy if I lost mine...but at the end of the day, it's a symbol. It can be replaced and have the same meaning. Your finger can't.

[Itsnotaclowncar]

I'm already married, and I just started a Pinterest board with this stuff! So pretty... (my husband calls me "Magpie" sometimes because of my love of shiny/sparkly things). If we have similar tastes, you'll probably love this website as much as I do: http://www.jewelocean.com/ I just found it today, googling around (I'm in full-on shopping mode now). Check out this sexy specimen: http://www.jewelocean.com/product_detai ... od_id=1576

Oooh shiny, thanks for the site!