Tricks to buying an inexpensive engagement ring that doesn’t look cheap
The average engagement ring costs between $3,500 and $4,000. However, if you read any entertainment magazines, you’ll have heard of engagement rings that cost their buyer somewhere in the six-figures. Unless you are a lottery jackpot winner or a wealthy celebrity, you cannot afford to spend more than a few thousand dollars on an engagement ring, let alone tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Luckily for you, if you are shopping for an inexpensive engagement ring, you have a wide range of options that can save you money without making you look cheap to anyone else.
Do not let television commercials or bridal magazines convince you that you have to save for months to buy your fiancé her dream engagement ring. You should never go into debt to buy a piece of jewelry. Remember that it’s your marriage and your relationship that is the most important thing, not the size of the ring you can afford.
There are a few things that you can do in order to find an inexpensive engagement ring. First, are you sure your fiancé has her heart set on a diamond engagement ring? There are other popular gemstones that are becoming very popular for engagement rings, including sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. These are far less expensive than diamonds, especially as a center stone, and are both trendy and beautiful. Alternatively, you can buy your fiancé a ring that has her birthstone as the center stone. Using a birthstone is a much more personal choice and is far less expensive than a traditional diamond engagement ring (as long as her birthstone doesn’t happen to be the diamond.) Also, if you like the idea of buying a different center stone, but you still want the engagement ring to have diamonds on it, you can have a small row of diamonds surrounding the center gemstone, or you can have some diamond side stones placed on the ring next to whatever gemstone you’ve decided on. The nice thing about choosing smaller diamonds to accent a gemstone center stone is that smaller diamonds are far less expensive than larger center stones, especially since smaller diamonds are far more common than larger ones.
Another option for an inexpensive engagement ring, especially if your fiancé is set on having a diamond engagement ring, is to buy one with several smaller diamonds instead of one large center stone. You can have them set in a cluster to make it look like one larger ring, and the great thing is you’ll have just as much sparkle as a single stone. Alternatively, if you’re sure you want to buy a diamond center stone, if you buy a smaller diamond center stone you can save some money, and if you have it set in a circle of smaller diamonds, the center stone will look far larger than it really is. For a diamond center stone, avoid buying an even-size diamond (like a full carat), and instead buy one that is slightly smaller. You’ll end up saving several hundred dollars and most people really cannot tell the difference between a diamond that is just under one carat and one that actually is a full carat. If you decide to have a center diamond set in a circle of smaller diamonds, you can even go down to a one-half or three-quarters carat diamond and it will end up looking larger than it is, and you’ll probably end up saving over a thousand dollars on your inexpensive engagement ring.
Of course, an even better way to get an inexpensive engagement ring is if you have a family heirloom. If your family has any old jewelry that was passed down from a relative, you can have the stone re-set for an engagement ring. And, it doesn’t have to be an heirloom ring. If you or your fiancé have an old necklace or pair of earrings, you can have the stone set into whatever style engagement ring you two decide on. You’ll only have to pay for the setting and the labor, which will end up saving you potentially thousands of dollars on a stone. Plus, even better, your inexpensive engagement ring will end up being an heirloom in its own right to be passed down to future generations.
Whichever of these methods you use to buy an inexpensive engagement ring, the ring you decide on will not look cheap. Instead, it will look like a ring that was presented to your fiancé with the love and commitment behind it that you and your fiancé will appreciate for years to come.
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