Sinking in yet???

Not really, the concept of being actually engaged is new to me. Have I dream about it in the past? Of course, what girl wouldn’t? But when the reality set in, I am still wow by the idea. That said, couple days after the proposal, both Tom and I studied up fast on the “engagement ring” issue. What do I want? What is a reasonable budget? The kind of questions that didn’t matter until one actually goes on a shopping trip. Tom said he read somewhere that those diamond retailers marketing the idea of budgeting for two months of salary. Yes, being an engineer, I quickly asked, “is that before tax or net take home?” It is a huge difference between the two with Uncle Sam’s cut and the 401K stash away. Come to think of it, it is a rather funny but necessitate conversation. Tom’s so perfect answer to all my budgeting questions on the ring and wedding is, “Whatever you want sweetie, you know you are spending our money!”

Hah! My project management skills and goal oriented mind come into play pretty fast here. I am not one to window shop the whole world. I am sure Tom is very much thankful of this. I said let’s just do a maximum 3 stores, specify a decent range to cover. During the first few conversations, we picked Robbins Brother and Tiffany. That is before I purchased any bridal magazines. Then after flipping through the two bridal magazines I quickly acquired last week, I thought it would be fun to perhaps browse Cartier. Strongly emphasizing on the “browsing” part…

For whatever reason, I think I have fallen in love with the marquise cut long time ago. And I am a solitaire girl. Given a choice, I always go for quality over quantity. For an engagement ring, one stone is just perfect for me. So last Saturday, we visited both stores. I was nicely surprised by the designer collections in Robbins Brother. I wasn’t sure if I were to find anything. But the sales lady was very nice, she understood that it was our first store, and I never felt any pressure. I found couple designer rings I like. And here is a picture of me trying them on. The top one is by Jeff Cooper, a bit modern take. I don’t recall who the designer is on the bottom one. The band on the second is very thin and has tiny stones on them, very romantic look. Oh, the tiny stones also allure to the impression of a larger center stone. She also pulled out couple marquise cut stones for us to compare what it might look like if I were to replace them from the round cut. One thing for sure, marquise cut is not readily available at this age. I found out later from the Tiffany sales person that it was a popular 80s design then. By the way, Tiffany’s marquise cut starts at over 2.5 ct., nothing smaller….there goes the idea with my price sensitive personality.

The next stop is Tiffany in South Coast Plaza. I went into the wrong entrance and walked around the whole store before I found the diamond salon. All I can say is that they really know what they are doing. And I am glad we shopped in this sequence. Well, I am not sure if it is just the lighting in there, but all the rings definitely sparkle like crazy. I am told that it is because Tiffany employs the proportional cut on their stones. The selection from here came down to two, a Tiffany setting with a brilliant round cut and a Lucida setting with a round cushion cut. They both are beautiful. It is a difficult choice. After comparing the differences, it comes down to for the same carat size; the Lucida would be about 10-15% more in the range we were looking at. We finally asked the sales lady to transfer couple more Lucida from their other stores. So bottom line, no ring yet (& no pictures, I forgot to take one in the excitement), but very very close. Of course, by now, both Tom and I know that we are getting one from here. For something like this, the choice comes easily in life. Perhaps, we both waited long enough for this moment in life!

Did I bother to go into Cartier? Yes, we made a quick 30-seconds round and I didn’t see anything popping out and calling my name. Until next weekend….