The earrings are beautiful.
I like the way Blue Nile lets you play around and see what it costs to change your specs. I think you made good choices. I did a lot of the same things with my pair as you did. I went 1.81 ctw instead of the full two carats which SOUNDS better but was a very tiny increase in size for a whole lot more bucks. I wanted platinum also but went with white gold. Adn I went lower in color than you--I went to H. Which has been just fine (no one can look into the sides and see color on your ear. Besides with the ideal cut, you really don't see color on these unless you put them right next to my F colored ring.) I did go to VS clarity though as I kept thinking that these would be the largest diamonds I owned and I wanted them to be clean enough for a ring--I'll probably leave them to my sons one day and they might want to make a ring with them rather than earrings.
I didn't do all this in the case of the earrings though with those Blue Nile slider things, since I was at Whiteflash. I kept talking to consultants there, who were great and babied me through the whole process in a nice way. In my case, I had a set budget (I won't say what it was). They started out telling me the biggest I could go there with the amount of money I had. I don't remember exactly but I could have got 2.50 ctw or something like that. But I couldn't see myself wearing that size and they would have been J color and SI2 which I didn't want to do.
I went to a brick and mortar and tried on earrings so that I could talk to them more intelligently, I remember. And I was glad I did. I had been going to get martinis, and I realized I didn't want that (they actually had already made the earrings and kindly changed the setting to the four prong basket I wanted). I could also see that the Hearts on Fire, which were the only ideal cut in the B & M, looked a lot better than the other earrings, so I was glad I was getting the ideal cut. I saw that actually, in earrings, J color was white looking in white gold or platinum,so I knew the H color would be great and I could tell from that which carat size looked good on me personally and what was over the top (for me personally).
I felt kind of bad to have put the sales reps to so much work, when I didn't intend to buy (but actually while I was there I saw a beautiful antique ring which I did later buy, not that I had to but I fell in love with it. I overpaid for it like crazy actually, because it looked just like my grandmother's engagement ring).
I also saw a pair of earrings there, I've never forgotten it--6 carat total weight!!! Very interesting to look at. But since 2.50 ctw was over the top for my ears, not for me. I wonder though if anyone has ever gone ahead and bought those. There are certainly people they would look good on (but they would need those special non-droop backs, definitely). They weren't ideal cut though so you got size but not the super duper sparkle that I have in any light situation whatsoever. The only time mine do not sparkle is when it is pitch black--people are always remarking on this.
I would've called but I am not a phone person. If I did call it probably would have been better bc I kepted refreshing my email page to see if someone had responded to me.
Jill I had tons of fun building my studs but it was also a headache. Everytime I would change my mind the price would increase slowly and by the time I had chose everything it would have been more than what I initially wanted to pay. For example I would be like, ok if I choose F instead of G the price would change almost $100-200 and then maybe I should just get 1ctw instead of 0.94ctw which also brought it up to $200, then Plat instead of white gold..... But my husband would tell me they are just studs why pay $200 more for something no one will tell? But I am happy with what I chose.
BTW, I did not know that they could verify if the dia was eye clean until I emailed them today about the pendant.
