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Does anyone have any general advice on picking an engagement ring? I'll be proposing soon and I honestly have no idea where to start. I assume that walking into a local jewelry store is the easiest way to do this but also by far the most expensive. Is there a better way?
-- Zeroth rule: A lot of women will put special meaning on her engagement ring, even if you upgrade it later, even if she say she doesn't. If she's just a basic bitch (no shade) who wants a big solitaire real-diamond rock on a band, give it to her. The money you "save" on tricks is nothing compared to whatever fraction of what the divorce would cost you can be assigned to inserting a bone of contention into your relationship this early. You're here to make her happy, not you.
-- Ignore Carats, they're a giant scam, they measure the weight of the center stone which nobody cares about. They're a bad way of measuring visual size, how large it looks on her finger, which is what she/her friends she's showing the ring to care about. Cut, design, arrangement, setting, and the size of your fiancee/her finger are going to matter just as much if not more than caratweight. Carats cost money, going up a quarter or a half carat in center stone weight will cost vastly more than achieving a similar visual effect by other means. Add a clever spray of little stones all around a .75, it will look much bigger than a 1 or even a 1.5, at a much cheaper price. It's pretty shiny jewelry, the goal is to look at it, not weigh it. My wife's ring is either just under or just over a carat center stone, I don't recall which, but it's an old fashioned mine cut diamond in a vintage art deco setting, and she has tiny child-bride fingers, so people look at it and go "Oh My God that thing is enormous! It's gorgeous!"
-- Speaking of tiny child-bride fingers, get your wife's ring size RIGHT. I thought I knew my wife's, we'd made a gag of asking her ring size during intimate moments for years. Turns out it was two sizes smaller than she thought it was, and the ring I bought had to be sized down repeatedly, and only kinda worked while requiring significant re-engineering. My jeweler's exact words were: did you marry a child bride? Settings only work within certain size ranges, and getting it right the first time is much better than any alternative.
-- Speaking of jewelers, I had a long family and friends relationship with the jeweler I purchased the ring from. He knew I was looking for a vintage art deco ring, and when one came in from an estate and my mother happened to be there to get a watch band sized he gave it to her to take home and show me, no deposit. If your family (or her family, or your boss, or his wife, etc) has such a relationship, work with that jeweler. If you don't have that kind of relationship, go on Etsy or go to Costco, but don't go to a jeweler you'll get fucked. It's just how it works. And for God's sake, don't go to one of the big chain jewelers. Zales or Jared is going give you absolute shit, Tiffany or Cartier might have something nice for @GrandBurdensomeCount but unless you're going to drop $$$$$$ you'll end up with something tiny compared to what you could have gotten elsewhere.
-- Determine her stone preferences. Colored precious stones, sapphires and rubies and emeralds, can be beautiful and majestic {Diana's ring from Charles for example} and much cheaper than diamonds; but you have to find out if she'll like that. Lab created diamonds are cheaper, subs like moissanite cheaper still (and often better!) but a lot of people will want a "real" diamond for an engagement ring. Call it marketing, call it superstition, but some people will reject anything "fake" being in their marriage ceremony. Find out what she finds acceptable, work from there.
-- Related to the carats thing, choose elaborate designs and settings over solitaires or triptychs. Solitaires, and simple tripart settings, highlight nothing but the size and quality of the diamond, they just demonstrate how much money you spent. An elaborate setting will look great, and more importantly it will make the ring harder to price for her/others. If you buy a solitaire it's a rock on a band, everyone knows what it costs for that size, it's just a dick measuring contest. If you buy an elaborate art-deco vintage design, nobody knows what it costs, they can't measure it easily. Think of it as the difference between three guys pulling up in BMWs: one guy is in a brand new base model 3 series, the second is in a brand new M3, the third is in a mint condition vintage 1975 2002. You can definitely say the guy in the M3 is richer than the guy in the base model, but you can't really say the guy in the 2002 is poorer than one or either. Even if you know how much it cost, the guy might just like it better than the modern M3 anyway.
-- Don't judge your fiancee for what she wants. Don't be one of those assholes who "well actually..."'s her out of what she wants and into what you want. And don't try to trick her by getting a diamond substitute without talking to her about it. You'll probably get away with it for a while, but oooh boy you can get in trouble once she finds out.
However if you have a big dick...
Then you'd buy her a pre-engagement ring that's a chip of diamond on a sterling silver band, and she won't care because it wasn't the budget she wanted stretched.
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