Making It Happen - The Ring Purchase

Posted by: Dan on Jul 23, 2007

If you’re going to start a story you need to start at the beginning. I won’t go into our whole relationship here, rather I’ll start with the thing every man needs to propose – the ring.

After a few months of dating Brooke and I went to look at rings. We only looked at one place – Kesslers Diamonds. We looked over the huge selection and managed to find 3 different rings. I believe one ring Brooke really liked, another both her and I liked, and finally one that was similar to the two we liked but picked by the jeweler. I didn’t care for it and of course it was the most expensive.

I don’t remember too much from that day other than I enjoyed the lady who helped us, she wasn’t pushy and listened to what we liked. We left the store with a little folder which I held on to. This was the best thing I could do.

Fast forward a bit. Okay fast forward a lot. More than 3 years later after a lot of highs and a few lows I was ready to purchase a ring. I had no clue where to start. I didn’t remember that the folder we received was full of information. When I finally figured that out I checked the folder, hit the Kesslers website and tried to find the rings we originally liked. I could only find one – the one the jeweler picked out which was our least favorite of the bunch. I browsed the website and picked out a few that I liked and could view in better detail at the store. Now there was only one thing to do – head to the store.

I was amazed when I made it to the store. Again they were helpful but one thing blew my mind. They had all our information still in the computer – including Brooke’s ring size. That was huge since I wasn’t sure how to go about getting that without being obvious. I could ask for some help from her family but I wanted this to be a surprise.

I was able to look at two rings and instantaneously I knew which was the right ring. After that it was all about diamond shopping – the hard part. There’s too much to know and unless you’re a jeweler it’s hard to know what to look for. I just wanted something that would look good on the ring. Nothing small that would be lost in the ring. At the same time not so big it made the ring look awkward – plus I know Brooke’s active enough that too large of a diamond could end up catching on a lot of things.

I knew the cut I wanted so I was good there. I knew the general size so I was good there. I had a range for the clarity. And I even had a budget. I thought I was set. However when you combine all that you still end up with a lot of choices. So how did I decide? Simple – I looked at what seemed like a countless number of diamonds. In fact I only looked at about 10. I checked them in all different lights, from different angle, on the ring – off the ring, and so on. Finally I just went with what I thought looked “just right”. I think I did a good job.

From there it was a matter of putting some money down and then going home to wait for the ring to get done. Plus there was the matter of working out a few details on the actually proposal part. But that is another story that is best told at another time.

Picture of the ring… after the proposal since I didn’t take a picture of it before then.