Anyone start small and stay small?

[Platinumplus]

People have different priorities.
I think you were smart because you managed to find a compromise between "family expectations" and the budget you were comfortable to wear on your finger.

This is such a great perspective. I’ve always thought of budget as how much you *can* spend, and not how much you *want* to spend. From the first perspective, my ring was under budget. From the second, my ring really leveraged my limited budget.

 

[MillieLou]

No, but I wish I had.

My original e-ring was a half carat diamond, decently cut in a simple setting. I upgraded to bigger diamonds a few times since but none of them had any meaning to me. They were just rings. Now I just wear my original wedding band which does have meaning

In fairness part of the issue is that I feel more comfortable wearing a plain band on my hands rather than any rings with stones, so even if I'd kept the original I probably wouldn't be wearing it regularly either.

It's the journey though isn't it. I had fun exploring jewellery along the way!

 

[missy]

I strongly disagree because I understand that people vary, as do their diamond sizes, and their expectations.
Perhaps a few people do what you claim, but certainly not everybody.
Many here speak up about how they are happy with relatively small diamonds.
I've never read and example of them being put down for it.

Just because you're part of a group in which some have X does not mean they expect you to also have X.

That's all in your mind, so don't do that to yourself; it's not fair to you.
We can all be at peace with whatever we own, if anything.

Agree completely. I know many people who are quite pleased and happy with their original ER diamond ring. My sister for one. We might be the ones who are exceptions to the "norm"

My philosophy is you do you and don't try keeping up with others. That is a sure fire way to unhappiness IMO
Remember that quote?

Theodore Roosevelt said "Comparison is the thief of joy"
Mark Twain wrote "Comparison is the death of joy.”

TRUTH

 

[purplesilk]

The problem is that people live comparison only in the negative connotation.
Comparison can be tough and painful, but
for me it's the starting point to discover the real me, my potential and my real tastes; when comparing myself/my tastes to others, I'm lead to analyze in depth the reasons of my choices: sometimes I realize I'm wrong and the others are right, so time for me to change; sometimes I find out others are deeply wrong, so I go my way.

 

[ringnut]

I started small and went smaller. My original engagement ring is a .62 carat MRB with a very disappointing cut that I confirmed once I got an Ideal Scope. It was purchased in the mid 90s before cut became easier to ascertain.

I have since purchased a 1980s vintage Jabel .25 carat MRB in a wrap setting with 12 full cut .015 melee diamonds. The cut of the .25 is flawless to my eye under the Ideal Scope and the melee diamonds are top quality as well. The set looks like a disco ball in just about all lighting, and I never tire of looking at it. It is definitely true for me that a small superbly cut diamond will make me happier than a larger poorly cut diamond, even when both are under a carat.

The irony is that the sparkle bomb set was 1/4 of the price of the original e-ring.

 

[Platinumplus]

@ringnut, I would love to see pictures of your sparkle bomb!

 

[Begonia]

I have a .71ct AVR in an O color. I had a tiny budget and bought the best I could with the budget I had, cut being king for me.

Honestly I do lust after bigger, and beautifully cut OEC's, but the ring I really think about is an antique engraved engagement ring that a PS found on rubylane (MamaBean's ring) . I think it is a Carre cut diamond around .50ct, and was engraved with the date of marriage in the band. That ring gave off energy and memories.

 

[junebug17]

@ringnut, I would love to see pictures of your sparkle bomb!

Me too!

 

[ringnut]

Here you go, @Platinumplus and @junebug17 ! I'm not that skilled at taking pictures of diamonds. I wish I could show you what it does in a CVS pharmacy!

 

[junebug17]

@ringnut, that is a really beautiful ring!! Love the diamond and the setting, I can tell it sparkles like crazy!

 

[ringnut]

@ringnut, that is a really beautiful ring!! Love the diamond and the setting, I can tell it sparkles like crazy!

Thank you, @junebug17 ! A lot of people would consider it out of fashion because it's from the 80s AND it's a wrap design, but I love it for the amazing diamond quality. I also consider it a unique take on the recent halo trend. I'm in love with it!

 

[ringnut]

Have you seen this thread?

Under 1ct diamonds

Here on PS...I have seen alot of different beautiful rings...different sizes, shapes, cuts, colors, cuts and settings And my hunger for eyecandy is always satisfied. And as much as I love,love, love staring, and drooling over the giant sized sparklies. There is just a special place in my heart...

www.pricescope.com

Do you know if there is a similar thread for under a half carat diamonds? If not, I think there should be! I just might start one if I don't find it.

 

[Kim N]

Do you know if there is a similar thread for under a half carat diamonds? If not, I think there should be! I just might start one if I don't find it.

There is, but it's an old one!

Under 0.5 Carat rings

Hi everyone! I love the amount of pictures that are on this site :love: the only thing I am missing is rings with diamonds that are below half a carat. I can totally understand that bigger is better ;), but I'm planning on buying one around 0.4 and I'm very curious to see what they look like...

www.pricescope.com

 

[ringnut]

There is, but it's an old one!

Under 0.5 Carat rings

Hi everyone! I love the amount of pictures that are on this site :love: the only thing I am missing is rings with diamonds that are below half a carat. I can totally understand that bigger is better ;), but I'm planning on buying one around 0.4 and I'm very curious to see what they look like...

www.pricescope.com

@Kim N , you're amazing! Thank you!

 

[vintageinjune]

I've always been into big/bigger gemstones/diamonds, but the ability to afford them when I was younger left them in the fantasy realm. Fun for an escape from reality, and I can happily enjoy seeing what others have without necessarily wanting it for myself.

If we could have easily afforded a 4+ carat diamond when we got engaged I'd have absolutely taken that, but we were broke college kids. It still pains me to think of buying something we cannot comfortably afford without affecting any other aspect of our finances. At the time, I requested either a 6.5mm OEC moissanite in a semi-bezel setting or a 9x6mm pear cut CZ in white gold. I received the 9x6mm pear CZ, and to this day it is one of my most precious pieces. It was $425.

Over the years as my income increased substantially, the amount I'm willing to spend on jewelry has stayed fairly proportional. My most expensive piece is still under $6k, which is nothing compared to many PS pieces.

I am willing, at this point in time, to spend $15-20k on a 4-5 carat lab diamond in a fun setting, because that's something I can save to pay for in cash relatively fast. Sadly, the diamond "that got away" left me feeling discouraged, so I switched plans to a totally different ring which was on my wish list, but in total will be less than $5k. My partner and I agreed I'll wait until after my career transition next year to start the process of finding my dream giant lab diamond again, and after we've taken my brother and his 4 kids on a trip to Disneyland with us.

So, all that to say, alas, I am at heart, a lover of gemstones that take up substantial real estate on my finger. If we'd been making the kind of money when we got engaged that we do now, I'd have started off bigger.

My mom on the other hand- she started small, tried a bigger ring because she loves my big ring, ultimately decided it did not feel "bridal" to her, and went back to a .6 carat princess on a pave band. All her other rings can be gigantic, but not her wedding set. Sadly, she lost her princess cut and has been moping for a year now about it, so over Thanksgiving I'm gonna try to talk to my dad to feel out if he'd be up for replacing it, maybe with a slightly larger one. She did say she thinks a carat would be fine.

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

Agree completely. I know many people who are quite pleased and happy with their original ER diamond ring. My sister for one. We might be the ones who are exceptions to the "norm"

My philosophy is you do you and don't try keeping up with others. That is a sure fire way to unhappiness IMO
Remember that quote?

Theodore Roosevelt said "Comparison is the thief of joy"
Mark Twain wrote "Comparison is the death of joy.”

TRUTH

that is so true Missy

 

[Platinumplus]

Here you go, @Platinumplus and @junebug17 ! I'm not that skilled at taking pictures of diamonds. I wish I could show you what it does in a CVS pharmacy!

Stunning! You can tell it’s an amazing diamond!

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

You do you.
My Mum has a friend who is like mega rich. I really like her, she’s so nice and money hasn’t changed her.
She still wears her original engagement ring which is like a .35 carat piece of “spit” in an illusion setting. It is her most precious piece of jewellery she says. She started going out with her still husband when she was 15 and got engaged at 17. Took him over a year to save up for the engagement ring. Married over 60 years.
She wears other $$$$$ diamond rings, bracelets and earrings etc but is still most proud of her engagement ring.

i love this
this is why i love my Garndma's and also her sister's ER (Aunty Neater and Uncle Horrie never had kids so that is why mum had her aunty's ER)
Grandma's one is smaller (much smaller than mum's one which my sister has)
but my grandad was a tradesman in a factory and it was the depression and i think about all the hours he had to work to buy grandma her ring (great uncle Horie was a civil servent in Wellington)
it was a nice factory (my dad worked there too -that's how mum and dad met) and it was owned by good people and grandma and grandad somehow managed to build a really lovelly house in a posh part of town during the depression (great grandad was a builder)
Grandad would walk to and from work up a big hill that got snow in the winter

they had had to delay getting marreid because of the depression and then they were hardly married and the war came
but i think of my newly enagged grandma with her sparkly ER showing the girls at work (she worked on the lace counter in a dept store until she got married), showing her sisters, or just going for a walk at lunchtime so she could see the sparkle in the sunshine
but when ever i wear their ring i always think about the excitment of my newly engaged grandma and then that long happy marrage

anyway its not my ER, its grandma's and although im all for repurposing, id never have the diamond made into anything else even if i had my own ER

 

[Platinumplus]

There is, but it's an old one!

Under 0.5 Carat rings

Hi everyone! I love the amount of pictures that are on this site :love: the only thing I am missing is rings with diamonds that are below half a carat. I can totally understand that bigger is better ;), but I'm planning on buying one around 0.4 and I'm very curious to see what they look like...

www.pricescope.com

Oh my goodness! I adore this thread. I really had no idea how perfect a third of a carat could be in a classic solitaire setting.

I didn’t really try anything on before buying my ring. My original ering wasn’t a solitaire at all. They didn’t appeal to me. I had an Alex Sepkus Candy ring in Yellow Gold which I absolutely adored. But after I had kids I developed a metal allergy and couldn’t wear gold anymore. Alex Sepkus makes his rings in platinum, but they don’t appeal to me at all. But platinum was my only choice (hence my username) so I reluctantly set out to buy a platinum diamond solitaire. I had small kids at the time and did my shopping online. I’ve since come to appreciate the beauty of a solitaire, and I love my ring, but yeah, I really could have gone smaller! (My mom would *not* have been happy!)

I’ve attached pictures of the Alex Sepkus ring in both gold and platinum. Such a different ring depending on the metal!

 

[Platinumplus]

And here she is: 1.07 carats Brian Gavin Hearts and Arrows, K color. I don’t remember the clarity, probably VS1? Set in the Brian Gavin classic six prong platinum knife edge. The wedding band is 2mm platinum half-round from Blue Nile. (I bought it first and wore it awhile just to make sure I *could* safely wear platinum. They go together well enough.)

 

[purplesilk]

Beautiful!Classic and classy!

 

[RetroQT]

When I was married to my late husband, my e-ring was a .50 ct oval. For out 10th anniversary, he upgraded it to a .72 ct MRB and I thought it was huge!!! I was over the moon.

That was before PS.

My current husband presented me with a 1.25 ct MRB when he proposed. That should have been “the one”. But then his ex-wife (a woman that made our lives hell as he tried to co-parent with her) got engaged and her ring was identical to mine in size and double halo setting. I couldn’t do it, so I changed mine up completely and got a 1.55 ct pear. Now, 12 years later, my primary e-ring is a 2.78 ct transitional.

My point is, I think I could have been happy never upgrading. But once I started, I just kept going. I hope I’m done. I want to be done. I need to be done. But I also find myself craving a 4ct OEC.

It’s a slippery slope, and one I’m trying to desperately gain some grip on. LOL!

 

[nala]

Ok. Two marriages here and two different experiences. First marriage at 20 started off with a .50, if that, don’t recall bc the ring was just not important. Until it was. I got a ring guard to dress it up, lol. But still not that important bc I didn’t even wear it!! Just was too young to appreciate it, I guess. Then it got stolen so we were given ins money to replace it. Went a little bigger but still didn’t wear. Our focus was buying a house, had a baby, career, lots of friends—looking back, I had sooo much going on at that stage of my life!!! Ended in divorce after 10 years.

Second marriage. We got caught up in the whole ring thing!! Lots of my friends were getting engaged at 30. Spent lots of hours admiring their rings. Found PS. And the quest began. I still had a lot going on—so I can’t say that was the reason. I know it was PS that influenced my preferences. I would never had expected that I would become an avid collector of jewelry or that I would own my 2.9 E mrb. Do I plan to keep going? I think that I have learned to be happy with my ring. I love the colorless E and I won’t be able to touch a round of that color in a bigger size. Contrary to what most PSer’s claim, to me color is perceptible! I wish that it wasn’t. So if it means paying double or triple to go up—heck no… common sense has kicked in! And I do have a size limit for rounds which are my favorite shape. I thought I could pull off a 5 carat emerald but I have recently learned that their personality might not be for me.

 

[Agnasia]

Such an interesting thread and the comparison thing does affect me, wish it didn’t. Although saying that, I’ve spent lots of time researching and creating my new ring, so I do feel that I’ve found what works for me and I never got to do that with my original ring.

I started with a 0.39ct MRB but have always loved vintage, so managed to persuade my husband to upgrade to a lovely 0.73ct OEC. I’ve gone from a solitaire to creating a three stone with a 1.24ct OEC centre. I hope this will be it, but I said that last time! I’m in the UK so diamonds are not generally that big, so I guess it’s just more my own desires. I’m also thinking of getting some more bands over time to create different stacks, although I love wearing my original wedding band and have never wanted to change it.

 

[Platinumplus]

@nala, I once got to try a friend’s emerald that was at least ten carats. Shockingly wearable, but totally not me. (Not that I could afford it!) They really do have a very different personality!

 

[nala]

I wanted to add… the whole size upgrade thing was influenced by my knowledge thanks to PS and the quest to attain perfection—not bc I wanted to come back here and post it or bc I wanted to be the person with the biggest ring. It was all about unleashing my inner emotional excitability! This characteristic is part of the Gifted and talented spectrum. We tend to fixate on certain subjects and obsess over them. That’s me! All the while I upgraded, I never told anyone in my real life and hoped they would not notice. And guess what? They. Did. Not. Lol

 

[LilAlex]

Has anyone else chosen a “small” diamond and stuck with it?

We did not think it was small at the time -- like yours, a bit over one ct -- but spouse has kept her same e-ring diamond for 25+ years. She wears it all the time and has "PS-nicer" right-hand rings. Upgraded the mounting to a Tiffany knife-edge knock-off, which she finds less comfortable than the paper-thin, barely-there, 14K placeholder ring I proposed with and that she wore for at least 15 years...

I have a very senior colleague in (very) upper-level "management." Not a seven-figure salary but probably close. One of my favorite things about her is that she still wears the same quarter-ct (if that, even) e-ring that she has had for nearly a half-century. In our circles, diamond size is a function of career stage at the time of proposal -- and not a metric of present-day wealth.

 

[RetroQT]

I wanted to add… the whole size upgrade thing was influenced by my knowledge thanks to PS and the quest to attain perfection—not bc I wanted to come back here and post it or bc I wanted to be the person with the biggest ring. It was all about unleashing my inner emotional excitability! This characteristic is part of the Gifted and talented spectrum. We tend to fixate on certain subjects and obsess over them. That’s me! All the while I upgraded, I never told anyone in my real life and hoped they would not notice. And guess what? They. Did. Not. Lol

Oh. My. Gosh! Me!!!! This is exactly me. I never correlated my need to obtain extensive knowledge and potential obsession on the current subject to me being a TAG person. (That’s what we were called in the school programs I was in.) It makes perfect sense though, even down to not telling anyone (outside PS and the few followers on my jewelry IG).

 

[MillieLou]

We did not think it was small at the time -- like yours, a bit over one ct -- but spouse has kept her same e-ring diamond for 25+ years. She wears it all the time and has "PS-nicer" right-hand rings. Upgraded the mounting to a Tiffany knife-edge knock-off, which she finds less comfortable than the paper-thin, barely-there, 14K placeholder ring I proposed with and that she wore for at least 15 years...

I have a very senior colleague in (very) upper-level "management." Not a seven-figure salary but probably close. One of my favorite things about her is that she still wears the same quarter-ct (if that, even) e-ring that she has had for nearly a half-century. In our circles, diamond size is a function of career stage at the time of proposal -- and not a metric of present-day wealth.

Yes - definitely this in the UK!

I hope it's OK to post this (mods please delete if not - I read the forum rules and it specifies no links to other jewellery forums, which this isn't). It's a popular parenting forum in the UK and most of the posters are broadly middle-class though there is a wide range. You will see the huge variety of rings that bears very little relation to wealth. People are very scathing of "upgrades" but if you keep (or accidentally break / lose) the original and call the new one an anniversary ring, you can get away with it It's pretty representative of what I see every day in the UK.

Show me your rings! | Mumsnet

I just love a ring thread! My DP and I got married last month, and I'm waiting for my wedding ring to come back from the jewellers as it was a little...

www.mumsnet.com

 

[purplesilk]

@MillieLou : very representative of Europe.

European people would laugh at you if you said you upgraded your e-ring, because
in Europe the engagement ring is the ring you've been proposed; any other ring is just another ring: anniversary ring, push present,..., call it whatever you want except engagement ring.