EVENT | Engagement Ring Shopping: Tips and Tricks
6/27/2021
Introduction
Let’s be completely honest here: Engagement ring shopping is an extremely daunting task, especially for all of us men who are cavemen when it comes to diamond rings. I had absolutely no clue where to begin my search. I didn’t even know where I could buy a diamond, how certain variables affect the price of the diamond, or even what shape of diamond my girlfriend wanted. The only thing I knew, was that I didn’t want to spend an absurd amount of money on a little rock.
In this post, I’m going to detail my engagement ring shopping journey from a total beginners standpoint. My hope is to be able to provide answers to common questions for my fellow cavemen to hopefully save you guys some time, money, and stress.
How much money should you spend on an engagement ring?
If you type the above question into google, you’ll surely stumble across the 3 months salary rule. Fear not, this rule is a MYTH that’s solely meant to destroy your wallet. In actuality, the rule was popularized way back in the 1930s by an advertising campaign run by the De Beers diamond company. De Beers basically said that a man’s way of showing true love is to spend at least 3 months worth of gross income on his significant other’s engagement ring. This was a marketing campaign… run by a diamond company… they obviously want you to spend more money on your ring. Don’t ever let your significant other use this rule as a means to justify increasing the ring budget. It’s extremely outdated and unrealistic.
Before you even begin to shop around for diamonds, you should set your budget - or the maximum amount of money you’re willing to spend on the ring. Some important factors to take into account when determining a budget include: income, savings, short-term expenditures, and your significant other’s expectations. Do not to pull money from investments such as stocks or retirement contributions. If you have large expenditures coming up (engagement party, wedding, downing a house, etc.), you may want to think twice about dropping extra cash on the diamond. If your significant other has a set preference for diamond specifications, there are ways to manipulate these specifications to reduce cost and maintain quality (more on this later). This fact could be used for or against you… but according to The Knot, the average engagement ring cost in 2020 was $5500.
Should you go engagement ring shopping with your significant other?
I took my girlfriend with me, and we looked at diamonds in jewelry stores together. This is a difficult question, and it really depends on your girlfriend. Is she nit-picky and detail oriented in terms of her belongings and/or jewelry? Do you think she would rather be surprised with a diamond you chose yourself? The question I repeatedly asked myself when pondering this dilemma was: If I’m spending this much money on a diamond, would I want to surprise her with something she’s not 100% satisfied with? SOME jewelers are very strict on their return policy - more on this later.
I know how picky my girlfriend is, especially with her luxury handbags, jewelry, etc. and I didn’t want her ever “faking” that she liked a diamond I chose for her. And thus, I decided to take her along so she could try out different styles and sizes, effectively minimizing the chance that she’d be unhappy with this gargantuan purchase.
For the fellas who have decided NOT to take their girlfriends ring shopping (and keep the ring a surprise): try to do your homework. Figure out at LEAST, what shape and carat size diamond she wants, and if she cares whether or not the diamond is “eye clean” (I’ll define these foreign terms later on). Also make sure you know her finger measurements, so you can choose an appropriate ring size. Remember, this is the BARE MINIMUM that you should know about the diamond, if you want to surprise your girlfriend and not have it be a complete disaster.
What are the most important characteristics of a diamond? The famed Four C’s and beyond.
This section will be the diamond dictionary, but in simple terms everyone can understand.
The Four C’s:
Cut - The number of facets a diamond has in combination with how well the diamond is proportioned. This in turn determines how light will reflect on and through the diamond. The “cut” is widely considered to be the most important “C” and determines how sparkly the diamond will be. I would suggest going with a diamond that has an “excellent” or “ideal” cut. Do not skimp out on the cut just to lower the price of the diamond.
Clarity - An assessment of the type, size, and visibility of the imperfections (also known as “inclusions”) in a diamond. These inclusions come in many different shapes and sizes. Some of the ones I’ve seen look like little white scratches, black dots, or a cloudiness within the diamond. This is where the term “eye clean” comes in. Eye clean basically means you can’t see any imperfections in the diamond with your naked eye. Heavily depending on the diamond shape, “eye clean” USUALLY begins with a clarity rating of SI (slightly included). Budget friendly recommendations for clarity fall within the SI to VS range.
Color - This is what you’d expect it to be: the color of the diamond. This scale runs from “D” to “Z”. A grading of “D” is the best and refers to colorless. The lower on the scale you go (all the way to Z), the more yellow your diamond will look. A budget friendly recommendation would be in the range of “G” to “I”, which are nearly colorless.
Carat - This one is pretty easy to understand and refers to the weight of the diamond, or how big the diamond is. For reference, according to brides.com, the average carat weight in the USA is roughly 1 carat. From my experience, increasing the carat weight will exponentially increase the price of the diamond. For example, a 2 carat diamond will NOT be double the price of a 1 carat diamond… it’ll cost much much more.
Cut. From left to right: excellent cut, good, and poor. You can see how the excellent cut diamond interacts with light much better than the good and poor cut.
Clarity. This is the map of a diamond that shows its inclusions (the red lines and squiggles) on all GIA certificates. From left to right: higher clarity to lower clarity. Credit to GIA.edu for providing this image.
Color. D being the best, Z being the worst. You can see how the diamond becomes more “yellow” the lower on the scale you go.
Carat. Weights of different diamonds. Diameters in millimeters are shown as well.
Diamond Shapes:
Diamonds come in all kinds of different shapes. You just have to figure out your significant other’s preference here and choose one! Do note that the combination of the four C’s that give you the best bang for your buck will slightly depend on the diamond shape. This can get very complicated, so I won’t get into the details here. Just as an example, color and inclusions are more noticeable in emerald shape diamonds, so you may have to opt for better cut and clarity. Each diamond shape has its own optimal combination to be budget friendly and not sacrifice too much quality. The budget friendly recommendations in the above section (The Four C’s) are meant to be used as a general guideline!
Plenty of diamond shapes to choose from!
Diamond Certifications:
When you go to the store to look at a certified diamond, each of these diamonds will come with a piece of paper called a certification. The certification will have the grading of the diamond in terms of the four C’s and much, much more.
There are many different labs that “grade” diamonds according to the four C’s and many other properties. The gold standard and most respected lab in the diamond industry is definitely GIA (Gemological Institute of America), due to their rigorous testing and consistency of results. Second in line would have to be AGS (American Gem Society). When shopping for diamonds, I highly recommend looking at GIA-certified diamonds only.
This is an example of a GIA certificate (or grading report) that comes with a GIA-certified diamond. Pay close attention to the 4 C’s on the left panel, the cut proportions on the top middle panel, and the inclusion diagram on the bottom middle panel.
Where should you begin your search for an engagement ring?
You should definitely start your search ONLINE. The main reason is to allow you to establish a baseline for how much your ideal ring costs. The tools on these websites allow you to play around with diamond characteristics to see how they can affect price. Three of the most popular websites are jamesallen.com, bluenile.com, and brilliantearth.com. All engagement ring websites are pretty much the same in terms of layout. They each have a page where you can enter in the specifications of your ideal diamond (4 C’s, price range, etc.). Once you enter in your specifications, the website will display a list of diamonds that meet your criteria. Take note, the prices you see can vary drastically even if 2 diamonds have the same specifications. For example: lets say you have 2 diamonds that are both 2 carat diamonds, VS2 clarity, G color, with excellent cut. One of these diamonds could cost you $19,000 while the other could cost you $24,000. How is this possible? What I found out was these price differences were due to the type and location of that specific diamond’s inclusions. If a diamond has many inclusions right on the “table” or flat center of the diamond, it will cost less. If there are certain types of inclusions that make the diamond appear cloudy and less reflective, it will cost less. These websites do NOT show you the certifications, so you will not know the size or type of inclusions present (you can however, call the website and in most cases, they can email you the certification right away). Once you click on a diamond from your filtered list, it will take you to another page that allows you to “super zoom” and view your diamond in a 360 degree view. With this image, its a bit easier to see obvious inclusions, but it’s still pretty difficult to see how these inclusions affect the diamond’s shine.
Now that you’ve done your online homework, its time to find yourself a reputable jeweler and go into a physical location. A few reasons why I don’t like to buy engagement rings off websites directly:
I don’t want to deal with constantly mailing back diamonds if I or my significant other doesn’t like the diamond.
I want to develop a relationship with a physical jeweler, so they can sit down with me and analyze the pros and cons of a particular diamond.
Pricing is often better if you go into a physical store.
Going in-store to purchase an engagement ring? THESE ARE THE MUST KNOWS.
We consulted 6 different jewelers before we decided on a place we trusted. Going to a few different jewelers at least is important, because it will allow you to get a general idea of which specifications you want and a price range.
I need to emphasize again that Its very important to know the price range for the diamond you’re looking for. This is one of the easiest ways to know if you can trust a jeweler or not. I’ve went into a jewelry store with certain specifications, knowing what it would cost, and the jeweler was trying to charge me DOUBLE. One to three-thousand more, I get it. Double? That was absolutely ridiculous. I hate saying this, but jewelers are also sales people, so they WILL try to get as much money from you as they can. A secret that I learned, was that jewelers will usually charge a certain percentage above what they acquired the diamond for. Usually, this percentage is around 15%. If you’re able to see their acquisition cost, be sure the upcharge is only around 15%. Another tip for reducing price by hundreds or even thousands of dollars is cutting sales tax. Most jewelers will waive sales tax if you pay full in cash, or if you bargain hard enough. Make it seem like you’re really on the fence about a particular diamond. Let them know if the store waived sales tax, it would make a big impact on your decision to purchase the diamond.
What happens if you go in-store and you can’t find any diamonds you like? Jewelers have the ability to source diamonds. Sourcing means they can acquire more diamonds for you to look at. How this process works, is you tell the jeweler your diamond specifications and budget, and they will look on a database to see which diamonds fit your criteria. Once they find the diamonds, they will “borrow” the diamond from wherever they got it, and bring it to the store for you to look at. If you don’t like the diamond, the jeweler will simply mail the diamond back to the original owner. BEWARE: you should NOT be charged ANYTHING for a jeweler to source a diamond. If the jeweler demands a down-payment or full-payment for them to source a diamond for you, DON’T DO IT. The reasoning is, you won’t be able to see your diamond physically before you pay. Often times, the jewelers that do this have strict return policies. If your diamond gets sourced and you don’t like it, then you’ve just wasted a lot of money.
Ring shopping isn’t just about the stone itself. To me, the customer service you get while in-store should be excellent. Engagement ring shopping is a big deal, and you should feel taken care of especially if you’re spending lots of money. Communication is important between you and your jeweler. I’ve spoken with a couple jewelers who just didn’t communicate well. Long wait times even with appointments, not answering calls, texts, or emails at all - these are red flags. I was unimpressed with these jewelers. They didn’t seem like they cared about what I wanted, and thus they won’t be getting any of my money.
So you decided on a diamond. How do the purchasing and returning processes work? The answer to this question will differ vastly, and is dependent on the jeweler’s policies. For purchasing, stores usually accept cash or card (Tip: put your purchase on a credit card to get free points! Take advantage of opening new lines of credit for sign-on bonuses as well!). Some stores also have interest-free payment plans that range from 1 month to 12 months. It’s important to get these details from your jeweler before the purchase, because they could drastically affect your decision. In terms of returns, I’ve been to stores that have a zero-return policy, all the way up to a 30-day unworn return policy. Some stores also have an upgrade program, where you get the full value of your diamond (at the time of original purchase) put into another diamond, even if it was purchased several years ago. Of course, there are caveats with upgrade programs, such as the new diamond must be at least 1 carat larger, or a certain amount of money more expensive.
Thank you!
If you’ve made it this far into the article, THANK YOU for reading, and I’m sure you’ve learned plenty about engagement ring shopping from my journey. Good luck with your engagement plans, and please feel free to connect with me here if you have any specific questions!
Congratulations on making it to this step in your relationship, and happy shopping!