My husband wasn’t stupid enough to buy a ring without me being there. He proposed to me & then we went to buy one later.

I can understand the reason for an expensive engagement ring back in the days when a broken engagement meant disaster for a woman. It acted as a kind of insurance policy. I simply cannot understand why they are considered necessary now. Also, the very fact that diamond prices are kept artificially high by the suppliers was enough to make me not want one. My engagement ring is an antique, set with a large, good-quality beautiful semi-precious stone. It cost a fraction of the price of a new diamond engagement ring, and unlike those diamonds did not immediately depreciate on purchase. A friend of my husband’s had his proposal rejected, so tried to return the ring to the jeweller. He was horrified to learn how little he would be offered for the ring as he had no idea how over-priced diamonds were.

My husband consulted my friend and his mother and sister when he went shopping for a ring. This was well after I had explicitly told him that I did not want a diamond…I preferred a cultured diamond (similar to how they make cultured pearls). I also feel the prices are inflated and that the mining process is destructive to the environment among other reasons. An antique would also have been lovely. So with all this advice and information the ring my husband proposed with was a modern simple band of 5 brand new diamonds mined in Russia. Aside from the diamonds it was just not my style at all. I kept the dislike to myself although expressed my surprise that he bought exactly what I had said I did not want. A couple of days later he asked me if I liked the ring and I could not lie. I told him it was the best gift anyone had ever given me and that I liked it but didn’t love it. He told me he knew his chances of getting it right were low so he made sure it could be exchanged before he bought it and that the shop also had a collection of antique estate jewelry. So together we went to the shop and I picked out the ring that had been his second choice and had the jeweler use a diamond I had been left by my grandmother after her death. So in the end I have a beautiful ring I love that holds a reminder of my beloved grandmother. I still don’t know how he bought me diamonds though!

My then boyfriend now husband picked out my engagement ring. It was GOLD with a CLEAR round center stone. (I had wanted white gold with a canary princess diamond and had literally folded corners of magazines down and shown him and talked about them to help him out).

When he proposed, I was so thrilled I didn’t even SEE the ring till hours after wearing it… through tears I saw the opposite of what I’d wanted and wondered who helped him choose and how he chose this particular style. I was torn with what to do and say. Knowing how proud of himself he must’ve been for keeping it a surprise, and how romantically he’d proposed (just outside the restaurant where we’d had our first date and later would marry outside of), I decided not to say anything and see if I could just live with it.

At times I wish we’d picked one out together so I could get the one I wanted originally, but my mind quickly shifts to what the ring means, how sweet it was that he picked it out and romantically surprised me, and that it symbolizes eternity with my wonderful husband of (now) almost one year! And the canary princess diamond fades in the distance as we move into our future together!

We sat together and researched online and bought one online at FascinatingDiamonds..it was good experience..