Engagement Ring Cost Graph
January 31st, 2007 @ 10:56 am by Mrs. Bluebell
Haha, because I’m a loser like this, I decided to graph the engagement ring price poll results! 
Here you go! (Click image for larger view)
(This is using the percentages when there were 225 votes)
A pretty classic bell curve if I may say so myself!
A lot of commenters on my earlier post seemed surprised that there were so many higher budget voters. How did you try to keep costs down? What were you willing to splurge on? How did you decide how much was the ¢¢â€š¬…”right¢¢â€š¬? amount to spend?
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20 Responses to “Engagement Ring Cost Graph”
I think my engagement ring was between $1000 - 1500. My fiance is a full time law student, so that’s a lot of money for us. The ring is a symbol for something that is worth a lot more to me than the object itself. I’m not really sure what is meant by keeping costs down for the engagement ring. I had nothing to do with the purchase. I know some people participate in the selection process, but it means a lot to me that he picked it himself.
I kind of noticed this site offers a lot of ideas for people with extraordinary budgets, but I suspect that’s because it’s more geared towards the NYC bridal contingent.
That’s not a criticism, just an observation.
I’m curious to see what D considers and extraordinary budget? and yes the NYC bridal contingent is a bit different than the rest of the US but that’s because the majority of the venues here won’t even let you in the door for less than $85 a head and that’s with a lot of leg work and wheeling and dealing on our part!
FH used the old standby of 2 months salary when calculating the budget and he shopped around for the best deal so i happily recieved more than what it was worth from an appraisal perspective
We also used the traditional 2 months salary standard (my husband is a software designer). I would have been happy with less but my husband really wanted to splurge on it, so it was something that’s just as eye catching when we’re 50 as now. He was also really insistent on getting good quality stones, and it does make a huge difference.
We discussed what would be an affordable amount based on our wedding plans, how much in savings (we have a joint savings account for big purchases like wedding, house), and how much we wanted to have left over in savings for those big purchases. Once we set a budget, we went shopping and only looked at rings within that budget.
(If any of you are ring shopping out there, it really saves you a lot of the stress. Just say, “we’re looking for something in X range” when you walk up to the counter. It made things a lot easier for us.)
Because our budget was pretty small, we went for a high quality, smaller size stone - that was the tradeoff.
My ring is very beautiful, very simple, and looks perfect on me. It’s exactly what I wanted.
Some people have insinuated that my fiancÆ’© is cheap (or worse, less committed) because it’s not very flashy. I’ve gotten comments along the lines of, “oh, that’s it?” and “oh…well, it’s obvious he’s a conservative spender.” I really take offense to that. I mean, not only is the meaning behind it so much bigger than what it looks like, but I picked the darn thing out myself!
That’s exactly what I mean. I’m grateful we don’t have to spend that much. I’m sure it takes a lot of money and a lot of work to get married in NYC! I’ve seen the beautiful pictures and read enough of the wonderful stories on here to know it.
My ring estimate was on the low end in large part due to the fact that we didn’t have to buy a center stone, we used the stone from FI’s grandmother’s engagement ring. Yay to both sentimental value and saving money!
heheh - that IS a nice normal curve! stats is so cool sometimes. (i’m a data geek)
anyway, yes, getting married in NYC is very expensive, especially in manhattan. i think i could have thrown my exact same wedding for half the price in other parts of the country. but i truly love ny, and i wouldnt have had it any other way.
as for the cost of my e-ring, i believe it was close to 2 months salary pre-tax.
My fiance saved up for almost an entire year (which required an insane amount of patience honestly) to buy my ring. He actually has a client that imports diamonds and sells them to stores and individual buyers so he ended up getting an amazing deal on a loose asscher cut stone. I’m trying to decide what I want the wedding band to look like - it’s Tiffany set right now . . . .
Mr Lemon and I talked about other rings, and I made sure he knew that I would be mad if he got me an unreasonable ring (in my terms). He splurged on quality and clarity and went for white gold instead of platinum.
I was super proud when he put the rest of the money from that “two month” hoopla into a savings account for our house.
Mr. Peach was/is in school so two months salary would have meant negative dollars. =P He did however have some money saved up from working during the summers. He knew what kind of style I wanted and he knew I preferred quality of quantity. He got me the biggest impeccable diamond he could afford given the constraints. While it’s no monster, for my finger size, I think it looks just right. Not too small, but not too big it looks fake. ^_^
My wedding band was in the higher end-but I didn’t want an e-ring really,and I found a higher priced band that I really love,so we did splurge a bit. I think it was worth it. It was just a little more than 2 months salary pre-tax.
Dude, you and your graph are awesome.
My ring is a three-stone ring and two of the diamonds were passed down (one from his side, one from my side) so all he had to buy was a matching side stone to complete it and the setting. It was very inexpensive
Carissa — I also am put-off by people’s reactions sometimes. I have daintly little fingers, so my dainty ring is perfect. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
A lot of people with more expensive rings are likely older and marrying someone with established careers and more money to spend. There’s a big difference between getting married in your twenties and a student versus getting married in your thirties– including the size of the diamod you get.
People aren’t necessarily “high rollers,” they’re just in a different stage of their life. I’m 31 and just got engaged, my ring is a lot bigger than all my girlfriends that got married 6 years ago…its just a contrast to where you are in your life at the time.
I agree with tmt that a large part of it is where you are in your life when you get married. We’re both in our late 20s/early 30s so when my husband proposed he’d been in the workforce for over 10 years and already owned a house, paid off student debt, etc. I think he just looked at his savings portfolio and decided what he thought was reasonable.
i’m with tmt and nancy above 100%.
I’m 21 and the FI is 20, and we were 20/19 when he bought the ring. He bought it on an $8/hour salary, and considering that, I think I got more like three month’s pay! So it isn’t huge, but I think it looks great. If anyone came up to me and made a remark that it was too small or implied that my FI must be cheap, they’d have an imprint of my ring in the middle of their face from where I punched them. Actually, I’m not left handed, but you get the point, right? 
I can’t even IMAGINE picking out a ring that costs over $1,000! (We’ll be picking it out together). I just can’t see spending so much money on a piece of jewelry. It’s the meaning BEHIND the ring rather than how MUCH it costs.
I would be worried about wearing something that costs (christ) 2 months salary! That it’d get stolen or something. Sheesh!
I love all the advice! I had no idea what the range was on how to determine what the cost of a ring should be [and according to income]. My soon-to-be-fiance told me about how much he wanted to spend on a ring. I’m ready to tell him that it doesn’t have to be that much now. I’m too practical to know that he’d spent that much. THANKS for the GRAPH!
Mrs. Bluebell, New York
Age and Occupation in 07: 26, Finance Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Playing with the cat and/or Consulting
Engagement Date: December 25, 2005
Wedding Date: June 2007
Venue: Bride's family summer home in the Adirondacks
About Me: Trying to find the perfect balance between family tradition (marrying at the house everyone else in my family gets married at), making our's modern, interesting and different from everyone else in my family's, and incorporating some Chinese tradition for my Chinese fiance. I really have no idea what it's going to end up looking like!
Also, I picked Miss Bluebell for my name because I have blue eyes and I'm a loser like that.
As you saw from my post, we bought what we could afford at that moment. Not after saving for a few more months, or getting credit. We just wanted an engagement and silly Mr. Kiwi wanted to actually have a ring to do it.