The more I thought about this thread I realized that I was in this very position once when I was engaged. I didn't get my diamond engagement ring until
after I was married.
I told him ahead of time that I wanted a 1.5 ct. tiffany solitaire in white gold. I didn't get it. He was a 24 yr old w/ limited funds(was paying off his college ed still) for the kind of diamond I would have been proud to wear. Was I ok with it? Yes and no. Yes, bec. I believed he was the right man for me and
a ring says nothing about the quality of the person you are marrying, it just shows how much a person can afford to spend, that's my opinion. But I still wanted one and I was really looking forward when I was single to that element of being engaged, showing off my ring proudly and having people take notice of it, so that part of it bothered me. But what really bothered me most in not having a ring when I got engaged was that people that I told I was engaged or people that I would bump into that knew I was engaged, their eyes would immediately glance at my finger, my bare finger
and I felt very embarrassed and like people thought something was wrong, either that I was marrying a man who was poor or that he didn't care enough to put something on my finger. So I told him my shame and he felt for me. He got me a citizen watch which I wore for a couple of years. I felt better that he at least gave me some symbol of his commitment and I don't remember anymore if I showed it to people, all I know is I felt like he tried and I was happy with that. We discussed getting a cz the night we got engaged actually at my parents' dinner table, I come from an old fashioned home and my dh asked my father's permission at the table and I was never actually proposed to, it was declared at that moment at the dinner table, another thing that fell short of my expectations, oh well, the proposal also is just that, a proposal, not the marriage so I got over it. We would have pretend proposals afterwards that whole first year, lol.
oh, so I never finished, my parents were very anti cz, my mom has beautiful diamonds and she couldn't fathom wearing a fake. I knew nothing about fakes so trusted her that they were hideous.
Then flashforward to a month or so after I'm married. My mom at some point talks to my dh w/out me knowing and tells him that she spoke to her jeweler and they realize my dh could afford a modest ring. It really bothered my mom that I didn't have a ring, I suppose, or she felt for me, I didn't think about it much though after we were married, just when we engaged.
I went with my mom, lol, not my dh, to pick out the ring at her jewelers. It was a little over 1ct round tiffany setting in white gold, the color and sparkle weren't that great, I could even make out a carbon dot in it! I got a small channel set wedding band too for like 400 bucks, maybe it was 300 and I wore them both so proudly. I knew my ring was crappy, but I had one finally, and I would gaze at it with pleasure. The ring maybe cost 1300, and this is back in 2000.
Then one day I was doing laundry at my parents house, we didn't have a laundry machine of our own back then and would go to them on the weekends to do a load or two. I smacked my ring into the washing machine accidentally and I looked at it and I thought I cracked it! There was a ring around the circumference of the lower part of the stone I hadn't noticed before. I ran upstairs to show my dh and parents and my dad said was so angry at his jeweler for selling us a crappy diamond.
My parents brought the diamond ring back to their jeweler together and came back with....an upgrade that they financed themselves. I was certainly happy, it is a stunning solitaire w/ beautiful color and clarity, modest size 1.12 or 1.17 can't remember, still not my dream 1.5 but I wasn't complaining, lol. Turns out the first diamond wasn't cracked, all rounds have that ring around the bottom of the stone and I had never noticed before and my mom doesn't wear a round so she was unfamiliar herself.
So that's my story. It bothered me my dh didn't get me a ring and I probably would have been better off with a cz to begin with since I was embarrassed to have people notice my bare finger and I now wear one even after the fact of owning a real diamond!
