As you may have noticed, my avatar on the left has changed. Yes, I´m getting married!!! As any girl will tell you, the engagement ring is one of the most exciting parts of the "getting married" process. It must be pretty memorable for the guys too, since aside from having to spend a considerable sum on it, there´s a lot of pressure on whether it will meet the bride to be´s expectations.
To be honest, I never could understand how a guy could go buy the engagement ring before proposing, without consulting his future bride. Outside of the usual ring size (which he could find out thru her friends or family), I think it would be good to know what kind of cut she´d like, what carat, what type of setting etc. This is a lot of money we´re talking about here. You don´t want to get it wrong. And really girls, once they get down on bended knee, propose, and give us the ring, do we really have the heart to tell them that we don´t exactly like the pear cut diamond set on yellow gold? We´ll just grin and bear it.....
So ever practical me and my fiancee, worked on this together. He knew exactly what I wanted (with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd options to boot,in case the 1st option wasn´t avai). And to be fair, he did so much research on this area too (he´s an expert on diamonds now), that I learned a lot of new things about diamonds too thru him, which influenced my choices in the end.
As part of our practical search for my dream engagement ring (and true to my being an internet shopping queen ;-) we came across Blue Nile (
http://www.bluenile.com/). The site had a great range of diamonds, plus the site was so user-friendly, it was just sooo much fun to browse around and"build a ring". Best of all, their prices were unbelievable (30-50% cheaper than retail!). Of course first thing we did was do our research and make sure they weren´t some fly by night, too good to be true site. And we were pleasantly surprised to find out how reputable it was. It´s the biggest online retailer of diamonds, has consistently been among Forbes top retailers, and had tons of positive fdbk from customers. The only negative fdbk I saw were from customers who said their order arrived 1 day late. We also found out how they could sell their items at such an affordable price (they cut off the middlemen, save on overhead since their online etc....).
Having done the research, we finally settled on a diamond ring that met our reqts. Since they don´t deliver to the Philippines, I had it delivered to a friend in California, who was coming to Manila in a few days. Since they don´t accept payments thru a Philippine issued credit card, you also have to do a bank transfer to send the payment (it was pretty easy and fast though, they help you thru the whole process). Once they receive your payment, it takes 3 days to build the ring and send it to you via Fedex overnight delivery - pretty fast!
Sigh, I was breathless when it arrived and I saw it with my own eyes (actually, we were both breathless - both me and my fiancee!). It was a great choice! And Blue Nile was such a great site to get it from. If you can find a way to get someone from the US to bring you your order, try out Blue Nile. You won´t regret it! If you need any assistance, don´t hesitate to contact their Customer Service. They are wonderful! Customer reviews rave about them. I personally experienced as well just how helpful they were.
Enjoy!
