Emotional Intelligence is widely recognized as the ability to solve emotionally based problems. Therefore it seems like a good place to begin an article about buying an engagement ring don’t you think? After all, in the 35+ years that I’ve been in the diamond business, I’ve yet to meet a single person who is not working within the confines of some sort of a budget.
Sure the budget varies from person to person. However, the reality is that our ability to pay for the engagement ring of her dreams is largely dictated by the amount of discretionary income that we have at our disposal.
You may or not be aware that according to various advertising campaigns promoted by the diamond industry throughout the years. However, the suggestion is that you’re supposed to spend between two and three months’ salary on an engagement ring. Now if you’ve been paying attention, I began this article talking about emotional intelligence. Obviously, that means that I don’t support the premise of that advertising campaign at all.
Balancing Emotional Intelligence His & Hers:
Let’s face facts… I’m a guy and the only time emotion affects my decision to purchase an engagement ring is the moment when I decide that I love a woman enough to want to spend the rest of my life with her and that’s also where the presence of emotion in the transaction ends.
From that point forward, the decision regarding what diamond ring to purchase and how much I’m willing to spend to obtain the ring is going to be driven entirely by how much money I have set aside for the project and the characteristics of the diamonds being compared. It’s all going to come down to facts and figures and there isn’t a category for emotion to be found anywhere on my diamond analysis spreadsheet.
It might not seem very romantic. However, buying a diamond for me is like purchasing a car or any other high-end luxury item. In other words, it’s all about performance and price. I’m not about to plunk down a chunk of my hard-earned cash on something without conducting my due diligence and I don’t believe that you’re going to either.
However, I can save you bunches and bunches of time and a whole lot of money when it comes to buying the actual engagement ring itself. Of course, I know that she’s probably left subtle hints all over the place about the exact ring that she wants. And I know that you want to make her happy. However, you also want to buy her the largest and nicest diamond possible without breaking the bank, right?
And if you’ve spent any time looking around at rings, you’ve probably figured out that a lot of the designer rings which are trendy right now are pretty expensive and that buying one will eat up a significant portion of your budget. Thus you find yourself at a crossroads of sorts.
The Quandary of Emotional Intelligence & Instinct/Desire:
In the first place, you want to buy her the diamond engagement ring of her dreams. However, you also want to be able to continue wooing her in the style which she is accustomed to. Otherwise, she might not accept your proposal. Oh, buddy, I feel your pain. After all, one of the biggest fears in life is that we will not be enough.
The second greatest fear is that we will not be loved. As a matter of fact, the whole process of buying the right engagement ring preys quite nicely upon both of those. With that in mind, let’s see if we can do something to relieve the anxiety that you’re feeling.
The first thing I want to remind you of is that the woman of your dreams is a little more reasonable than you might be giving her credit for. Sure, the desires which she’s expressed for the perfect diamond engagement ring might seem a bit over the top. However, they are only expressions of a dream and are probably not a requirement for her actual happiness. At the end of the day, the true significance of an engagement ring is what it represents.
Tossing It All Out the Window:
The reality is that women shop for engagement rings and wedding dresses by flipping through magazines for most of their lives. I have a girlfriend (an actual girl-friend) who recently shared a really deep secret with me. As a matter of fact, it was a private folder that was stashed away on her computer
It was filled with images of engagement rings and wedding dresses which she’s downloaded off of jewelry design and bridal design web sites for years. The interesting thing about this is that she doesn’t even have a boyfriend!
She does, however, have really expensive taste and zero emotional intelligence. This means that whoever the lucky guy who falls in love with her is, he’d better have really deep pockets. Or at least that’s what you’d think if you happened to trip across her secret stash of wedding dreams. Because the truth is that she’d be happy, truly happy, with just about whatever ring he eventually buys her to express his commitment of love.
How do I know? Because we’ve talked about this subject for quite some time on several occasions. Apparently there is no emotional intelligence when it comes to engagement rings. Apparently, it goes right out the window when you drop down on one knee and present the ring. As near as I can tell, the female brain short circuits and they are pre-programmed to scream yes. Of course, this is an extremely broad generalization and there will be exceptions to the rule.
With this in mind, here’s my sage advice: Focus on the diamond first and foremost, it is the centerpiece of the engagement ring itself and the primary focal point that everybody will be focusing on. Tthe ring is just window dressing and believe me, it’s most likely going to be changed out 3 – 5 times throughout the course of a lifetime. In my experience, many women will change settings almost as often as they change shoes! But very few of them will actually surrender their engagement diamond for an upgrade!
So if you’re thinking that you need to balance your budget between the diamond and the setting and that the best way to do this is to buy a smaller diamond, it’s most likely going to cost you more money in the long run because when she eventually wants a larger diamond, you’re not going to be able to get it away from her to offset the price of the upgrade… nope.
With that in mind, I suggest that you dedicate the majority of your desired price range to buying the nicest, largest diamond you can afford. Then have the diamond mounted in a traditional solitaire style setting. After all, you can also reset the diamond in a more elaborate setting for an upcoming anniversary.
Online diamond vendors such as Brian Gavin, James Allen and Blue Nile offer several versions of traditional solitaire style settings at very reasonable prices, most starting at just a couple hundred dollars. A significantly more intelligent alternative to designer settings costing three to four thousand dollars and more. One of the designer settings featured in my friend’s secret dream cache has a retail price tag well over ten thousand dollars and it is built to accommodate a center stone in the range of two carats! Yowza!
Imagine dropping well over ten grand for the engagement ring semi-mount and then having your bride announce five years later that she’s grown tired of the ring, that it’s out of style and that she “really wants this one now!” and you do realize that nobody is going to give y0u any real trade-in value on a used piece of jewelry, right?
It’s practically impossible to remove all of those tiny accent diamonds from the ring and so you’re going to forfeit the value of those and receive just the melt trade-in value of the metal… congratulations, ten grand just became like $200 – 500 bucks. Yea, that traditional solitaire style engagement ring is looking better and better all the time!
Now if you absolutely, positively, must present your fiancé with a fancy setting that looks like it was made by a famous jewelry designer… I’d like to point out that Brian Gavin, James Allen and Blue Nile all offer a variety of high end settings that look very similar to the most popular designer settings. And if you truly need something custom, Brian Gavin has a fantastic custom jeweler on the premises.
They are able to create some pretty amazing designs using Computer Aided Design (CAD) and as you can see from the graphic provided above, you’ll be able to see how things are going to look through the entire design process! All of those images are computer generated renderings created by the CAD program! Pretty cool, huh?
