Lab grown emeralds are a couple hundred bucks and are way prettier than diamonds.
Moissanite is an excellent diamond alternative if you want a clear stone. Cheaper, just as resilient, and sparkly as fuck.
Yup, it’s even what they use in their displays because they sparkle more than a diamond.
No I’m pretty sure that’s just so if there’s a robbery they aren’t stealing the good stuff.
Just like the pancake syrup they pour over the pancakes in the TV commercial (it used to be motor oil).
Or the milk they put in the cereal (it used to be thinned out Elmer’s glue)
My wife has a Tanzanite engagement ring and loves talking about it
IMO it’s kind of romantic Tanzanite only comes from one single place.
My wife’s engagement ring is an emerald, I don’t think it was lab grown but it was way cheaper then a diamond and looks easy better then a piece of “glass”
My friend works with lab grown crystals and there re ones like lutetium aluminium garnet doped with cerium (LuAG:Ce) and similar which look awesome
I wonder if there’s anyone interested creating lab diamonds that have imperfections that essentially become indistinguishable from the mined ones. There wouldn’t be any money in it, but they could theoretically crash the blood diamond market.
Its already happened, its why big diamond cartels etch symbols into diamonds. They literally can’t tell the difference anymore.
Its not super common for them to do that as its at least unethical and illegal in some places. Plus unless your literally trying to counterfeit, why would you want a flawed diamond?
I just looked them up, they’re almost like kryptonite, or TV Uranium. That’s so cool
What board has posts like this nowadays? I was on the chans a few weeks back and it was basically all brain rot and fascism.
I don’t really know about posts like this, but the only board I occasionally go on these days is DIY. Still riddled with brain rot and fascism, but some of the 3d printing and sewing threads are interesting imo
Check with your partner and see what kind of ring they want for their engagement.
I went to the jewelry store with my partner and shopped for her engagement ring. Ended up doing a custom piece with a rose-gold band and a couple of blue topaz gems. She wanted a ring that would fit comfortably under exam gloves (she worked in a lab at the time). She’s much happier with it than a big heavy pointy rock, and it was way cheaper (like 450 for the whole ring).
I’m going the custom route as well I just think if you give them something custom it’s so much more meaningful than just going and buying something that was merely expensive.
Also with a really expensive diamond ring you never want to wear it because you always worried it’s going to get stolen.
On that note, I find diamonds to be the most boring gemstone. Any of the ones with colour are far more interesting to me, I don’t get why anyone would want to pay more for diamonds (outside of their industrial purposes) even if they were actually rarer.
Modern CZs actually look really good
Lab grown diamonds are actually flawless, so the jewellery industry represents them as being too perfect. Apparently you need the imperfections that natural diamonds have in order to have ‘character’ and therfore value!
Wait until he finds out how much the reception will cost.
How much does it cost compared to the ceremony itself?
It depends a lot on what you do, I am currently looking and its annoying how few mid price options there seem to be. Like its either go down the pub with your mates for £150, or £20k invite a bunch of people you barely even know.
Why so little in the 4 figure price range? Seems like for that you need to just organise something yourself and say its just a party.
I wonder if it would just be cheaper to get catering to the Church hall, kind of like how they do with funerals and ordinations
Yeah pretty much, a community hall of some form that would let you do as you like with it kind of thing. Had a friend do that but she also wanted all the guests to bring their own dish to share for the meal. Given that she asked for money as a gift from people I am pretty sure it was the worlds only profitable wedding.
That’s actually such a great idea…
I agree the “rock” hints strongly at it, but unless they’re american* weddings aren’t very expensive. That whole lavish show-off thing the rest of us just ignore.
*) hmm, maybe indian too
Currently planning what seems like a fairly mid sized wedding in the UK
It’s already looking like it’s going to be over double the cost of a roughly equivalent wedding one of my friends had only 3 years ago
Based on some of the price lists of suppliers for the following year we’ve seen, they’ll be getting even more expensive. The industry is getting quite out of hand
My wife and I looked at places a couple of friends got married at a couple of years earlier when we were planning on our wedding and those venues had doubled in price since then. A couple of years later our venue doubled in price. The wedding industry really seems intent on pricing itself out of existence!
Dutch wedding receptions aren’t cheap either, the main difference is that here it’s much more common to keep it small and not have a reception.
Exactly - there’s no general custom to throw one in “keeping up with the Joneses”-style.
Wife and I decided on moissanite. It’s big, extra sparkly, and 1/10 the price a similar diamond would be. Almost as hard, too - won’t get scratched except by another moissanite or a diamond.
This is what I always say. When people want diamonds they either want them because they’re pretty or expensive. If you want expensive then buy a gold bullion, if you want pretty buy a moissanite, for both, buy both.
I got engagement with moissanite for my now-wife. She says it is too big and firery-sparkly. Costed me almost nothing compared to a micro-sized diamond on a silver ring I’d get at a major jeweler.
Eh it’s now about 1/3 the price. Lab diamonds are getting cheap. Still a solid option though.
Ah, I haven’t kept up, I edited my post a little. Thanks!
Dang a lot of diamond haters in the comments! I would never buy a mined diamond for the ethical concerns but I think lab grown diamonds are worth the price. Moissanite is really pretty but it does throw more colors which may not be to everyone’s taste. Diamonds have a really clean white sparkle. And the price difference between the two is not as big as it used to be apparently.
To me diamond looks like a piece of glass. Sure it’s more durable but I think the existence of modern glass ruined any visual uniqueness diamond had.
Then the things like Swarovski crystals just entirely destroyed any remaining appeal.
Get ye some moissonite, son
Blaming Sooners is weird, since the trend is slowly moving away from diamonds
One of the ideas I had years ago was to get an uncut puck of lab diamond, (at the time this was ~$1500 from one place, probably cheaper now) find a lapidary and get them to cut out a literal diamond ring, a ring made entirely of solid diamond, and then my spouse could say ‘That’s not a diamond ring. This is a diamond ring.’ in a cheesy Aussie accent.
If it loses 50-80% of the value as soon as it’s used, might as well get a used one if you must have a natural diamond. This also applies to cars and plenty of other things. Let someone with more money than you take the hit.
Pretty sure a used engagement ring is worse than lab grown in the eyes of the unwashed masses.
Used means cursed, it failed once and will fail again. As if the mined materials have any effect in a relationship.
Now you just tell people that it was stolen from a murder victim. But it’s alright because they had a really long life together before that happened. Then it’s okay.
Unfortunately the murderer was their significant other.
Damn, one of these without a “fake and gay” explanation, and I’m too tired to think of a good one. I’ve never gotten to be the fake and gay guy, and I’m missing my chance D:
But anyway, as others have said, lab grown, vintage, there are other options.
But has anyone considered a rock that doesn’t just look like glass? There are so many cool rocks out there, people! I’d literally rather have a piece of quartz that my SO and I found together turned into a ring than I would have a piece of a much fancier/“valuable” stone that I have no attachment to.
When my parents got married, they had gone gem mining at one of those places with the troughs of dirt, and you pan it yourself. They found some rubies, and had wedding rings made from those. How fucking cool is that? Way cooler than a thing you have no connection to, I think.
Diamonds don’t look like glass.
Other than that you are correct about everything.
I mean, I was being hyperbolic, but they’re just… Boring to me. I know a lot of people love them, but to me they just look like fancy glass.
Fake: anon has a gf
Gay: anon doesn’t want to buy an engagement ring for his fake gf
Fake: anon uses 4chan but refers to himself as a normie
Gay: getting himself blackpilled on het culture
White sapphire is even cheaper than moissanite and most people don’t know any better. It’s a little less durable than diamond but looks a lot like a natural diamond. My wife cared more about the look than the actual pricetag, so I got what looks like thousands of dollars worth of ring for less than 10% of that. She’s clumsy, so if she bumps into something and the stone pops out and gets lost, no big deal.
Discuss with your partner. Do not try to trick them by getting them a diamond alternative and then telling them it’s a diamond. A reasonable partner (imo) would rather put some of that money towards the wedding and/or marriage itself rather than into a ring. Get the wedding menu you really want or put it towards a house down payment or new furniture or something.
The obvious answer is to buy a large synthetic one. It’s still real.
Nah, get a moissanite, it is more brilliant, and because it is used as high voltage SiCfets it is way cheaper.
Yeah sure, I’ll consider that if and when monogamy ever becomes any sort of option for me.
But disregarding me, personally, you can see quite how there’s a bit of manipulation going on if you’re pretending that the visual is “real”, right?
Never bought her a diamond
Never even bought a ring
Never even got married with a giant ceremony or big event
Been together for over 30 years, bought property and all kinds of things, traveled to over 30 countries. Still not married.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
- got married at city hall for like $20
- got him a synthetic diamond ring for $300 (looks great, large diamond with lots of small decorative diamonds, easy looks 10x or even 100x the price we paid)
- spent all of the money we would have spent on wedding and ring on a long vacation
Congratulations
Thank you. This was in like 2020 though so it has been a while :D
Congratulations on 5 years then … no better way to show you love someone than to stick with them for that long.
Thank you!
Same boat.
At the end of the day, marriage is a government contract.
Why the fuck would I want the government involved in my relationship?
Because the government is involved in all sorts of other things, including, for example, who’s allowed to make decisions for someone when they’re sick or dying and unable to make decisions for themselves.
And if you want to make those decisions for your partner you need to have some kind of government involvement in your relationship, either a legal marriage or some other waiver / power of attorney / whatever.
I’ve heard stories from elder gays about the United States before gay marriage was legal. Back when someone who’d been with their partner for decades couldn’t even visit them in the hospital when they were dying, because they weren’t legally the next of kin. When a young gay man could be in the hospital with AIDS and their estranged, anti-gay parents could swoop in, deny medical care, pull the plug, and take his body away from his partner and community to cremate him and flush the ashes, and because those parents were the young man’s next of kin no one could do anything to stop them.
Not to mention finances, inheritance, taxes, power of attorney, all the messy government stuff that becomes much simpler when you have a legal marriage that automatically provides it.
I think of what could happen if my partner was in the hospital and their parents were their next of kin and I’m very happy for our legal marriage.
What you described is exactly why Equal Marriage mattered so much. Thank you for highlighting that. I think, now, there are ways to designate someone in that role (besides marriage)? I’m not 100% sure of that. If not, I’d like to see that done.
For the original topic, I’m very much of the view that love should not be tied to consumerism of any type. If I were to get married, it would certainly be a courthouse wedding, with no rings or any of that; purely for those legal benefits.
We got married because otherwise her parents would get too annoying when we moved in together. We picked out rings without stones together and had six people present at the wedding.
Congratulations … best kind of wedding in my opinion
“still haven’t made my mind up” aaa relationship 😭🥀💀
Sounds to me like they’ve made up their minds a long time ago and have proven their love for one another for over 30 years. I don’t think there exists a thing that could prove it better.
It was like that for a year or two … then it turned into 30 … we wondered for a long time … but after a while, you both realize, I’m never finding someone like this again in this lifetime.
Why not just get married then?
Same philosophy, but we did get married after we realized the legal protections and tax benefits were worth it. We just saw too much opportunity for our very dissimilar families to pull some nonsense if someone became ill or incapacitated.
We snuck into a park (that requires reservations for ceremonies) with some friends and that was that.
The rings are simple and inexpensive, and also rarely worn. We know what we’re about.Congratulations … we get along with each others families very well now and there’s no worries about anyone pulling anything on us (although there is always a chance that may change) … but at the same time, everyone is now so freakin old that it almost doesn’t matter to anyone any more. We are seriously thinking of getting officially married, simply for the fact that this is the only way to deal with medical rights issues for spouses and partners.
Yeah. Both of us depart from our families, and didn’t want to be in a position where we could have a parent or sibling try to “pull rank” about some medical decision, or have to worry about assets.
Didn’t buy her a diamond or a ring, but I did buy a marriage certificate and signed it at the location of our first date. We’re pretty happy with it
