Weddingbee Blog

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.

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 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!

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!

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. 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. ^_^

Dude, you and your graph are awesome.

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’m with tmt and nancy above 100%.

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!