How to Buy a Diamond Engagement Ring

It became traditional to give a diamond when proposing after Archduke Maximilian asked Mary of Burgundy to marry him with one in 1477. In fact it is so traditional now to give a diamond as an engagement gift that most women will expect one when they are being proposed to! Modern day women get luckier and luckier with current traditions when you consider that it used to be commonplace in the 1920s for the woman to give their fiancée an engagement ring in return - to be fair, they still had the least expensive option as birthstones were recommended as appropriate, except when the man’s birthstone was considered to be ‘feminine’! However this was a tradition that didn’t last long and even having the man wear a wedding ring was a rare thing before World War II – throughout the 1970s it was worthy of comment in newspaper accounts of weddings if it was a ‘double ring ceremony’.

Try and be aware of what style your future fiancée likes before you buy her an engagement ring – ask her what she honestly thinks of newly-engaged friend’s rings, or let her point out some rings she likes in a jewellery shop window one day as you’re passing! Another sneaky (and less obvious) way of doing this is to get one of her friends, her sister or her mother to suss out what she likes when out shopping. Make sure that you know her ring size before buying and it is always advised to check out the returns policy of the shop from which you buy it so that you can exchange if your girlfriend really doesn’t like it!

The general consensus for the buying of an engagement ring is that the man should use the ‘two month’s salary’ rule, which means that the ring should cost the equivalent of two months of the man’s current salary. This is quite a lot of money which needs to be saved for as you can’t just put aside two months of salary as you would have nothing left to live on! It is often the case that you can get financing for the purchase of a ring – where you get credit checked, put down a deposit and work out with the jewellers what your payments will be and for how long. The one thing that is important to remember is that you should never settle for a low quality ring – if you don’t believe that the women you are about to propose to is worth two month’s salary then maybe your heart isn’t really in the relationship after all! If you need to keep costs down opt for a ring with fewer facets on the stone’s surface, or go for a stone that is less than a carat weight – smaller diamonds tend to be cheaper than solitaires.

Prices of diamond rings can vary considerably – it often works in the customers favour to go to jewellery shops and get an idea of styles and prices before going online to compare. The internet tends to be competitive and online jewellers tend to sell for cheaper than highstreet shops.