Engagement Rings: Cost and Other Stuff

[Borachio]

That's my thinking. Anyone with some cash can shell out and get an off-the-shelf modern ring. But giving someone a one-of-a-kind ring that has been in your family for a century means something.

But what, exactly, does it mean?

Shelling out cash means that the person doing so has at least that quantity of cash to shell out.

Giving someone something with an uncertain market value on the other hand?

Still, I'm expressing a very utilitarian view of engagement rings here.

Wasn't their original purpose a guarantee against breach of promise? So that if the proposer changed his mind the potential bride simply kept the engagement ring as financial compensation for her loss of future revenue rather than having to take him to court.

Nowadays it's of course just some kind of superstitious behaviour. Since breach of promise went out the window...oooh....don't know....C19th?

 

[downtown]

Yes it is, and I know people who spent more...

But then again everything in this city is madness. No amount of money is ever enough. It's tiring.

When the time comes I seriously consider throwing the party in a different city. I can use that excuse that all of my family is from other states.

I have to agree. 100k on a party, even if you were paying for hundreds of guests' airfare and hotels, is madness (and certainly something that would appear to be outside of an upper-middle class expense and into the purview of the out and out rich, but I suppose that's just quibbling with semantics).

I imagine that in Brazil, everybody jacks up the price of services when they hear it's for a wedding, just like in the US (a fancy cake? That's 150 bucks. OH IT'S FOR A WEDDING?? 3,000!!, etc).

One of the most gratifying parts of planning my wedding was getting so many of my friends involved, which helped bring down the costs considerably. We had a buddy DJ for next to nothing. My sister is in art school, and recruited a small army of excellent photographers at way below market rate. We had a friend who owns a Chilean restaurant who helped get our catering costs down, etc.

At the end of the day, we have 175 people party with us for around 5,000. The only thing that we really cut corners on that most people wouldn't, I suppose was booze, which we didn't have...not because my wife and I are both observant Mormons (and so were about 50% of the guests), but because the venue would have slapped on an extra 2,000 insurance charge.

I think I read the average American spends over 30K on their wedding, which seems completely stupid to me. Why go in debt for a party or a vacation? The only thing that you get to take with you are the photographs, and people are going to forget what they ate at your wedding in a month.

 

[_random_]

That doesn't tell me much. Pearls can be hellishly expensive. My Nana had her pearls valued and ended up having to insure the damn things separately.

Hot damn. Shows how much I know.

 

[luiz]

I have to agree. 100k on a party, even if you were paying for hundreds of guests' airfare and hotels, is madness (and certainly something that would appear to be outside of an upper-middle class expense and into the purview of the out and out rich, but I suppose that's just quibbling with semantics).

I imagine that in Brazil, everybody jacks up the price of services when they hear it's for a wedding, just like in the US (a fancy cake? That's 150 bucks. OH IT'S FOR A WEDDING?? 3,000!!, etc).

One of the most gratifying parts of planning my wedding was getting so many of my friends involved, which helped bring down the costs considerably. We had a buddy DJ for next to nothing. My sister is in art school, and recruited a small army of excellent photographers at way below market rate. We had a friend who owns a Chilean who helped get our catering costs down, etc.

At the end of the day, we have 175 people party with us for around 5,000. The only thing that we really cut corners on that most people wouldn't, I suppose was booze, which we didn't have...not because my wife and I are both observant Mormons (and so were about 50% of the guests), but because the venue would have slapped on an extra 2,000 insurance charge.

I think I read the average American spends over 30K on their wedding, which seems completely stupid to me. Why go in debt for a party or a vacation? The only thing that you get to take with you are the photographs, and people are going to forget what they ate at your wedding in a month.

It may seem like an extravagance of really rich people, but believe me, in Rio it isn't. A friend of mine who is getting married next month spent nearly two years worth of wages on his party, slightly exceeding the 100K figure I mentioned. Crazy? Hell yeah! But unfortunately it is becoming the norm; it is now expected of people like us to throw those parties.

What you mentioned about people charging the crap out of weddings is also true. In fact this friend of mine mentioned precisely his experience with wedding cakes. When he mentioned it was for a wedding the vendor took the catalogue he was looking at from his hands and gave him a new one where everything was 10 times more expensive. The flower arrangement at the church cost him 2.5 thousand dollars. The photographers for both ceremonies (church + party) cost 5K. And so on and so forth. Then comes the big ones, renting a place for the party, the food and the booze (and of course everybody expects quality imported booze at a wedding party, and anything imported is ridiculously expensive in Brazil, twice the US price). And of course the gifts (slippers for all the female guests to wear after the high heels start hurting their feet, candy packages, etc).

This friend is inviting around 250 people. I can easily see myself being forced to invite twice as many, because I come from a huuuge family and even my European second-degree cousins will expect an invite (luckily my GF has a family orders of magnitude smaller and not as nearly close). So yeah, doing it out of town looks very tempting. I suppose I could easily bring it down to 25 - 30K USD if I did it in Minas Gerais or Espírito Santo (I have family in both places and could probably get a place for the party for free as they own all sorts of stuff) as opposed to Rio, where my bank account would be raped.

And I wholeheartedly agree that even 25K is a waste. But I can't escape social conventions entirely...

 

[emzie]

We had a friend who owns a Chilean who helped get our catering costs down, etc.

That's a useful trick.

 

[peter grimes]

That's my thinking. Anyone with some cash can shell out and get an off-the-shelf modern ring. But giving someone a one-of-a-kind ring that has been in your family for a century means something.

Indeed.

When I've given my wife rings and such, I go to the diamond district here in NYC. It's a lot of fun, actually - you go into a sort of mall that has hundreds of rock sellers, setting sellers, jewelers, polishers - every step of the process. Buy a couple rocks, buy a couple settings, have them set and polished, and walk out the door with a unique bauble.

It's definitely worth checking out the next time someone's in NYC, even if you don't spend any money.

 

[Mise]

While your responses are interesting, I'm really more looking for your personal experiences than advice (which I still appreciate).



If I had any sort of moral compulsion about the diamond business I would probably never buy any diamonds. I mean, what are my options?

1. The De Beers syndicate. Which is pretty much the people selling rocks you mention.
2. A blood diamond. Yeah, no.
3. Research diamonds and figure out a syndicate- and conflict-free diamond that I would probably need to get from Russia, that would likely be expensive, and whose quality would not be assured.



Opals are nice, but there's no way I would ever get an opal for an engagement ring. They aren't hard enough and they aren't timeless enough (like a gemstone would be) (which is to say they are too much a slave to fashion and would look dated down the road).



Eighty.

FYI, De Beers doesn't operate a cartel any longer, and now sells about 30% of rough diamonds globally by caratage (weight).

You can get diamonds much closer to their cost price if you go online to e.g. Blue Nile, as most internet diamond sites are actually just drop-shippers for diamond manufacturers in India, Israel, Belgium or the USA. That is, the websites don't hold any stock, they just operate the website and customer service for diamond manufacturers to list their diamonds and sell direct to retail. Cuts out the middle man, i.e. the diamond retailers in the US. You can get really good deals by looking there, just make sure to do your research on the website to make sure it's legit. Blue Nile is the biggest and most well established, so start there.

You can buy synthetic (i.e. man-made, grown in a lab) diamonds, which should really just be called "diamonds", since that's just what they are. Just google for them.

If I were after a ring I definitely wouldn't buy retail. I just did a quick check on Blue Nile vs Tiffany: Very Good-cut, F-colour, VVS2-clarity, Round, 1.00-carat Diamond in a Solitaire platinum ring (which is very nice set of parameters for an engagement ring) costs just under £6,000 on Blue Nile, but on Tiffany the cheapest 1ct Round Solitaire is £7,500 -- and that's probably for a worse clarity, colour and make! (It doesn't say exactly what the 4Cs are on Tiffany's website.) So already you're saving 20%, and also getting a better quality ring out of it.

 

[Gucumatz]

So that's why BVB created a thread on different colors of Gold...

Good luck man!

 

[Farm Boy]

Diamonds don't do a thing for me. Emeralds are pretty, though.


Sapphires are pretty, too.

But my favorite pieces of jewelry are either amethyst, pearl, or turquoise. As for a ring... I rarely wear them, except when I'm dressing up for some occasion and won't be doing anything where I'd be scared of either losing it or if it would interfere with my activities. So any engagement jewelry I'd want would likely be in the form of a necklace.

Actually, scratch that. I don't wear necklaces that often, either (it's hard to find ones that go with everything). Just find me a nice rock. Amethyst quartz is my favorite. No jewelry setting necessary.

Most important post of the thread here. I didn't have squat for cash when I proposed, but I knew the woman silly enough to spend inordinate amounts of time with me didn't really care much about diamonds, but she loves the look of sapphires. I bought a horridly inexpensive oval cut sapphire studded with diamond specks around it and actually hit her tastes fairly well. She's always claimed she loves it and has worn it everyday since(the wedding band just slips on next to it).

At the end of the day, we have 175 people party with us for around 5,000. The only thing that we really cut corners on that most people wouldn't, I suppose was booze, which we didn't have...not because my wife and I are both observant Mormons (and so were about 50% of the guests), but because the venue would have slapped on an extra 2,000 insurance charge.

I think I read the average American spends over 30K on their wedding, which seems completely stupid to me. Why go in debt for a party or a vacation? The only thing that you get to take with you are the photographs, and people are going to forget what they ate at your wedding in a month.

Damned straight. You know what is going to be stressful immediately after that wedding and probably for as long as you are going to live? Money. Have a nice shindig with the people you care about, take some good pictures. Don't spend so much you have to dig yourself out of hole for something so ephemeral as a party when you are just embarking on something supposedly as not-ephemeral as a marriage.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

How much did you pay for your engagement ring? Your answer in terms of number of weeks' salary would be more helpful than an absolute value since you could be a multi millionaire or a hobo and that $3k ring could represent any relative value of your take home pay.

My engagement ring was free. I knew I was going to get married and I was getting ready to move with my girlfriend to a different state, but I didn't have the money for a ring.

I got a ring from my grandmother, actually. It was an old ring a man had used to propose to my mother. She broke off the engagement but never gave the ring back and it sat in a drawer for 30 years.

I told my wife where it came from and it didn't bug her, she's not superstitious about it's history or anything. It is also bigger (carrat weight) than what I could have afforded.

So you might want to ask your family if they have any old rings laying unused in drawers. You'd be surprised what kind of rings old folks accumulate that they'd be willing to part with. Plus, it would have the benefit of history (and after a polishing it will look new). It may also feature a unique cut or stone.

The one I gave my wife isn't princess cut, it's got three smaller diamonds aranged in a pattern. She likes it and gets complimented for it as no one has one like it.

Then again, maybe it would be useful to put it in absolute terms. Quite possible $3k is about the upper limit for what a reasonable person would ever pay for a ring. Or maybe you can't get a decent ring for less than $3k. I don't know.

You can get a very decent ring for less than 3k. I wouldn't spend 3 months + salary on it unless I was very financially secure. I plan on upgrading my wife's ring when I'm out of school and making real money. But I think the emphasis on HUGE RING NOW is a bit silly.

What do folks think of how to get rings? Is getting your own ring custom made ideal, or is it acceptable to get something off the shelf? What about used and estate jewelry? Do you think it matters if your fiance knows that the ring was custom made, off the shelf, or used?

I wouldn't custom order one, and I probably wouldn't buy a new one until I had explored all the options. Check out pawn shops and such - you can get much bigger, better and altogether nicer rings for the same $ at a pawn shop than you could at a jeweler. Also, look for jewelry stores that are going out of business.

We found our wedding bands at a jeweler that was closing down and we got a $1,000 set for less than $500.

Bonus points for discussion of marriage bands (his and hers), channel stones, stones other than diamonds (either as accents or as the primary stone), whether or not diamonds are even necessary (or if CZs or other replacements for diamonds are acceptable), and what cut to use (I'm uncertain about why you'd get anything other than a brilliant round cut. Emerald and square cut diamonds look dumb to me.).

I have a band that has a center band of gold surrounded by silver above and below it. It looks nifty I think. But I'd be happy with a silver colored ring (either silver, steel or one of the other less-than-precious medals) as well.

I wouldn't spend very much on your wedding band at all. If you do get a nice engagment ring for her, you might look into getting a matching band that can be soldered to the engagement ring. Those are becoming popular, they look much nicer than two mismatched rings and lots of women wear their engagement rings along with their wedding bands these days.

Edit: I would suggest non-diamond rings as well, but here's an important point:
Casually broach the subject with your girlfriend or in some way test her feelings on the issue. The last thing you want to do is buy a non-diamond ring because you just *know* she won't care, only to find out she does care.

 

[Farm Boy]

I wouldn't spend very much on your wedding band at all. If you do get a nice engagment ring for her, you might look into getting a matching band that can be soldered to the engagement ring. Those are coming back into vogue, they look much nicer than two mismatched rings and lots of women wear their engagement rings along with their wedding bands these days.

Fixed a little bit. My mother has one of those. As I'm a bit older than many here and my parents weren't young when I was new this is probably following the typical-ish cycle of things coming back in every 2 to 3 generations.

Spot on with the male wedding band. I think we picked mine up for 40 bucks at Wallmart. It's plain and acceptable and it means no less for not having been expensive. If you want something different though, I guess go for it!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh I didn't know that was a recurring fad. The jewelry store people sure hyped it up to my wife. Best new thing!

 

[sophie]

I think I read the average American spends over 30K on their wedding, which seems completely stupid to me. Why go in debt for a party or a vacation? The only thing that you get to take with you are the photographs, and people are going to forget what they ate at your wedding in a month.

Yeah, that seems to me to be the norm. My girlfriend and I are hooked on a show on TLC called Four Weddings in which 4 brides-to-be attend each others' weddings and then viciously rate them against each other. The winner gets a free honeymoon. The extent some people go to get a bigass wedding is just horrifying to me. Especially when one bride throws down a hundred grand plus on her wedding. I think keeping a modest-budget wedding and doing most of it yourself puts a much nicer, much more intimate, much more personal touch on the whole thing. To be honest I don't think I could see myself spending more than $15,000 on a wedding.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The only thing that really will push up the cost is catering for a lot of people. You can skimp on many things and still have a great wedding, but providing food for over 50 or so gets unavoidably expensive.

But 30k is rediculous no matter how you cut it unless you're Oprah's daughter.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Three month's pay on a ring!?

I'm sorry, but if a woman is expecting me to spend near to seven thousand dollars just to get a shiny rock with some metal attached to it, she's got another thing coming.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think I spent a little less than $10,000 6 years ago(good economy!) on a wedding that had all the frills you need. Add a little bit more if you spring for an open bar rather than a cash one. Try not to start married life with a nice trip away if you can and try not to start it broke if you can. That's just so much more stress than you really need. I know it's not a luxury everyone can pull off, but it's worth a try.

 

[Patroklos]

I used THIS SITE to buy my ring. I got an exceptional deal and they also had six months interest free financing if you are in to that. Diagrams of each diamond and its flaws as well as easily understandable grading charts for the Cs.

Like I said, I probably saved 50% over what I saw in stores and other sites. Just put a little effort in, learn about the topic, and remember its about what you/she likes. Hell, my fiance doesn't even know what I spent on the ring so what does it matter? At the same time don't get hung up over a small amount of money if its the difference between what you want and something you don't like. In the end this piece of jewelry is not like anything else your wife will own (just like your wedding bands). You will be wearing these everyday for the rest of your lives so make sure you are happy with that (whatever floats your boat).

Also something to remember is that rings can be upgraded during anniversaries of wedding vow renewals later in life. I know a few coworkers who had their original engagement diamond matched and turned in earrings with the dude buying the size diamond he really wanted to buy for the ring during the 10/20/25 year anniversary. Or you can add side stones. The key here is they bought what they could afford at the time, and again bought what they could afford at the time 10/20/25 years later which is generally going to be more. The moral of the story is don't buy more than you can afford.

My wedding will be 20K for 200 guests. Part of that cost is the city itself that is famous for weddings (Charleston, SC where we are from) and its destination as I am not stationed their anymore. I am also getting married later in life (over 30) so I probably can afford more than some of you who married younger. I also have benefited from some very fine weddings from family and friends, dozens of them, so I have no problem spending a bit to return the favor. It all washes out in the end if you are intelligent about it.

 

[MobBoss]

Not all women are alike, Patroklos

In some ways they are.

You might find a woman that will deny she's interested in such a ring. And years later, you'll find out she was. In other words, she's probably just being polite to you to say she doesnt care when she really does.

I don't think I could marry someone who would insist , directly or indirectly, that I blow so much money on something just so she can run off to her friends and show it off.

The ring means more to a woman than just that.

There are intelligent women who don't care about that and would rather invest the money in our future, and if I ever end up marrying I don't see how I could marry the materialist kind. It just doesn't sound compatible with the type of person I'd be looking for. And don't tell me that sensible women don't exist, because they certainly do.

Of course they do. But every woman wants a man to show her they care. And getting a decent ring is showing you care.

but like I said before, /foreversingle

Not suprising.

My wife has made no bones about it that I have to buy her a new ring for our 30th Wedding Anniversary. Its going to put me back around 5k to 7k easy. That, plus an anniversary trip to either Mexico, or Hawii (she wants to renew our vows with one of those beach thingys) and i'm 10k out. But she's worth every penny of it.

 

[GenMarshall]

I always wonder if engagement/wedding rings must be made of gold or can the material of the precious metal be something other than gold (including alloy mixture such as electrum, a blend of gold and silver)

 

[Patroklos]

Platinum is in. I actually like it, but she was adamant it be white gold. She's the one wearing it so who am I to complain.

I personally like platinum because of the nice patina it gets over time. I will probably go yellow gold though as I already wear a gold military college ring.