Engagement Story (Part 2)

Well, from the last post, you can guess which jeweller I felt most comfortable with. I had done my research, and knew the 4Cs of diamond. In fact, I've liked jewellery for as long as my mom can remember. (Even long than I can remember! In grade school, we had to do a speech every year from grade 3 to 8, and in fact in grades 6, 7 and 8, I did 2 speeches each year (1 in English, 1 in French). It was some public speaking program. The point I'm not-so-eloquently making is that my grade eight English speech was on birthstones.)

Anyway ... I'm off topic. (As usual.)

I felt like a valued person in TresOrs. I did not feel pressure. The saleslady's eyes did not flash dollar signs when she found out what we were looking for. She did not pressure us to buy. She just answered our questions, and asked some questions about my/our preferences.

I did find one ring that I loved ... then found out the ring cost $10,000. Sigh. A lot over Wade's budget. (I'm not exactly sure what Wade's budget was, but I know it wasn't that.) Plus, the ring wasn't exactly what I wanted. Close, but I'm picky. It was a princess cut diamond with just a few small diamonds along the shank of the ring. I was looking for a princess or other square cut (princess cut is the most popular square cut, but there are other cuts, such as asscher and radiant.

Anyway, the feature that I just looooove is when you can see the side of diamond. Like these ring examples:











So we went back once to keep looking and talk with the jeweller. He indicated that he could either bring in other rings for me to look at or design a ring. He indicated that there are many one-of-a-kind (or very few-of-a-kind) rings out there, but the fact that it's already been designed means we don't have to pay design fees.

He was quite honest in discussing ways to save money. He reviewed the 4Cs again (cut, colour, clarity, carat), and explained why cut is the most important. (A good cut can make a lower quality colour and clarity appear better.) He seeks out only well cut diamonds. When I expressed my desire to get Canadian diamonds to avoid conflict diamonds, he explained that jewellers purchasing from reputable sources that rely on reputable processes cannot get conflict diamonds. It's just not possible.

Anyway, at this point, the jeweller asked me to send emails of rings that I liked (not a problem - I had a whole folder of saved rings.) Then he'd see what he could find that's similar, and let me know when we could go back in.

(Note: in the end I decided to get a Canadian diamond, due to their quality, to reduce my carbon footprint and support the (kinda) local economy (well, local being 2000 km / 1250 mi away from the "local" Canadian diamond mines versus over 10,000 km / 6000 mi to the African mines).)

To be continued ...