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Step 3. Buying a Ring
With enough money left over for the Bachelor Party
Do your research
No matter what, you never get a second chance at an engagement ring, so you've got to do it right the first time. So do your research, and do it right. Don't try to get creative, and for god's sake don't surprise her with something. Feel free to enlist the help of her friends, but unless she has explicitly told them exactly what she wants, they might not be much use to you at all. This is simply not the time to leave anything to chance. There is absolutely no shame in going shopping together beforehand, because if she doesn't have a good idea that the proposal is headed her way anyways, you guys have all sorts of problems to deal with.
How big should the diamond be?
If you're one of those lucky guys who's going to marry a girl that doesn't want a diamond, count your blessings and skip this section. However, you should really make sure that
she truly is one of those girls, and isn't just saying she is to try to be easy to get along with. Otherwise, this is an extremely tricky question. Bottom line - the diamond should be big enough to
make her happy, and big enough so that she isn't embarassed to show her friends. She's going to be sporting this ring a long time, so it's something she needs to be proud of, but that's going to
depend an awful lot on the individual girl. And don't buy her something so big that she's worried to leave the house with it, it looks fake, or she puts out an eye trying to pick
scratch her nose. You should also remember that there is a vague correlation between the size of the diamond you buy your fiancee, and the size of your own penis. Okay, we're kidding about the
correlation, but sometimes I wonder if those guys who buy the mega-carat diamonds are really compensating for something.
What about the other C's?
If you know anything about diamonds, you know there are 4 C's - Color, Cut, Clarity and Carat. We already dealt with the last one, Carat (size), but that still leaves three to go. Don't skimp on Color or Cut. Color starts at D for colorless, and gets worse (cheaper) with E and above. If you aren't a snob, and she hasn't asked for one, D is probably a waste of money so save yourself some bills and drop a couple levels. Don't go too far though because you will notice a yellow diamond, especially when she holds her ring up to her friend's ring to compare. Most of us can safely get away with an F without anybody noticing. Don't skimp on Cut either, because this is what makes it sparkle. I'm not going to delve into the details of all the cuts, but sparkles are what make a diamond pretty, and sparkles are why girls like diamonds (little known fact: girls are part Crow - "Oooh, sparkly!"). It's probably not worth getting one of the fancy branded cuts like Hearts on Fire, but look for words like "Ideal" and "Excellent". Learn about "Depth" and "Table" while you are at it, and thank me later.
One place you might want to skimp out on is Clarity. There's a couple of reasons for this: First of all, nobody will ever see that you have skimped, and it's the only C that's subjectively graded. What do I mean? Well we are dealing with inclusions and imperfections in the stone. Grades go from FL (best), to IF, VVS1, VVS2, VS1, VS2, SI1, SI2, I1/2/3 (worst). The beauty is, that even with the SI grades, you can't see any of these problems with the naked eye! That's right, you need a loupe (ie magnification) to see these problems, and yet you can pay an arm and a leg to avoid them. Unless your girlfriend is a real stickler and she's going to be reading the GIA report and grading your performance, anything better than a VS1 is for suckers. Heck, VS1 and VS2 might even be a waste of money, but if you narrow your search down too much it might be hard to find some stones. But please, please stay away from I1 or worse, because you can and will see the inclusions, and this will haunt you for the rest of your life.
But what about that bit about Clarity being subjective? Well you can measure a stone's Carat (weight), Color and Cut, but there is no measure of Clarity. Experts sit around all day long and peer at diamonds under a magnifying glass to try to grade them. But even experts slip up, and you can find a stone graded worse than it really should be, which means a bargain for you. Hunt for those SI1 stones that should really be a VS2, if you can find them!