Natural vs. Lab-Grown Diamonds for Proposals

Popping the question is a momentous occasion, a carefully crafted moment symbolizing a lifetime commitment. Every detail matters, from the setting to the words spoken, and of course, the ring. But when it comes to the centerpiece, the diamond, a new dilemma arises: natural or lab-grown? Both options hold merit, and the decision can feel like navigating a minefield of tradition, ethics, and budget. Let's delve into the pros and cons of each, helping you choose the diamond that reflects your love story.

The Allure of Natural Diamonds: A Timeless Symbol

Natural diamonds boast a rich history, formed under immense pressure and heat deep within the Earth over billions of years. This very origin imbues them with a sense of romance and exclusivity. They represent a finite resource, each stone unique with subtle variations in color and clarity, whispering tales of the planet's fiery past.

For some, a natural diamond carries a deeper significance. It embodies a legacy, a potential heirloom passed down through generations, a tangible link to loved ones who came before. The emotional weight of such a piece can be incredibly powerful, solidifying the commitment being made.

Ethical Considerations: Mining and Sustainability

However, the natural diamond industry faces criticism. Traditional mining practices can have a devastating impact on the environment, causing deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Ethical sourcing is crucial, ensuring the diamond comes from conflict-free zones and adheres to responsible mining practices. Researching the jeweler's commitment to ethical sourcing is paramount.

The Sparkle of Innovation: Lab-Grown Diamonds - Ethical and Affordable

Lab-grown diamonds, on the other hand, represent a revolutionary shift. Created in controlled environments mimicking natural conditions, they boast the same physical and chemical properties as their mined counterparts. They sparkle with the same brilliance, hold the same fire, and can be cut and polished to achieve the same dazzling effect.

The ethical edge of lab-grown diamonds is undeniable. Their creation bypasses the environmental impact of mining and potential human rights abuses. Additionally, they are significantly more affordable. With advancements in technology, lab-grown diamonds offer the same level of brilliance at a fraction of the cost, making larger, higher-quality stones more attainable.

Beyond the Stone: The Power of Sentiment

Ultimately, the decision goes beyond the diamond itself. Consider your partner's values and preferences. Do they appreciate the romantic allure of a natural diamond, or is sustainability a priority? Discuss your values as a couple. Perhaps the story behind the diamond holds more weight than its origin. Maybe it's the thoughtfulness behind the choice, the effort invested in finding the perfect stone, that truly matters.

My Personal Reflection: A Balance Between Tradition and Progress

For me, the decision is an internal debate. While the romantic notion of a natural diamond formed over eons holds a certain charm, the environmental impact gives me pause. Lab-grown diamonds, however, present a compelling alternative – ethically sourced and stunningly beautiful.

Perhaps, a compromise exists. A vintage setting, imbued with history, could be paired with a lab-grown diamond, creating a unique piece that blends tradition with modern innovation. This symbolizes a commitment to the future while acknowledging the past.

The Final Choice: A Reflection of Your Love

There is no right or wrong answer. The perfect proposal diamond reflects your love story, your values, and your aspirations as a couple. Whether you choose a natural diamond, meticulously sourced to ensure responsible mining practices, or a lab-grown marvel of modern science, let your choice resonate with the love you share.

Remember, the true sparkle lies not in the stone itself, but in the love story it embodies. It's a symbol of a future built together, a shared journey that begins with a whispered "yes."

Diamond Studs from Blue Nile

Diamond purchasing is addictive and more so when the shopping is done online. While my wife has been happy with the Destinee diamond ring that I bought to propose, she has been reminding me that she lacks a pair of diamond earrings to complete the package. I had consistently voiced my resistance to buy the diamond earrings but in my heart, I was trying to keep the gift a surprise.

After much thought and research, I decided to gift her a pair of diamond earring studs this Valentine's Day and went online for this purchase instead of going to one of the brick and mortar shops. A few online retailers were promising but I eventually went with Blue Nile for the ease of their online diamond selection tools.

I was not prepared to spend a large sum on the diamond stud earrings but they have to complement the ring that she already has. That makes certain parameters pre-defined - white gold, around 0.3 carats.

I browsed through the available Blue Nile diamonds on different days with the same search parameters and realised that there were new stocks of matching diamonds from time to time. With a stroke of luck, I chanced upon a set of well matched diamonds and made the puchase.

These were GIA certified Ideal-cut, G-color, SI1-clarity, round, 0.30-carat diamonds with excellent polish and symmetry, making for a total carat weight of 0.6 carats costing around SGD$1500 with setting. I think it is a great purchase for this pricing. I made a compromise in terms of going for G color and SI1 clarity since I doubt anyone will ever really take a very very close look at the diamond studs when my wife is wearing them but the ideal cut grade should help the diamonds glitter beautifully when viewed from a distance.

The online purchase from Blue Nile was easy once I decided on the diamonds. After payment, all I had to do was to wait for the delivery to my home. I would be considered a totally satisfied customer if not for the shipping service that Blue Nile uses. Shipping was via Fedex and Fedex only delivers during office hours unlike my experiences with DHL where evening deliveries are done.

Regardless, the diamond stud earrings were finally delivered to my hands and given to my wife whom was pleasantly surprised. The setted diamonds look wonderful and sparkles brilliantly. I know she loves the diamonds and was already putting them one to go to office the following morning.

For anyone whom has a budget and will like to maximise their dollars, I will strongly encourage them to check out the options at online retailers before heading into a shop. As a novice, I paid more for my first diamond ring and the premium paid was for the marketing, the branding. Today, I have no doubt that I can get a comparable diamond solitaire online for a lower price easily.

Diamond for Valentine's Day

The interest in diamond purchases peak every year in the January/February period because of Valentine's Day. Interestingly, many people think that it will be a very romantic thing to propose on Valentine's Day or even to just gift a diamond to that precious someone.

The power of the tagline "A Diamond is Forever" has seen it entrench the notion of diamonds as the perfect gift for the deserving lady. The sight of a little ring box is enough to send many tender hearts a fluttering regardless of the size of the ring inside.

For the uninitiated, do not worry too much about getting the perfect diamond for your other half. Just get a rough feel of what sort of diamond quality you are comfortable with by browsing through the options available before committing. Do the legwork by visiting the major jewellery stores such as Lee Hwa Jewellery, Tian Po, Soo Kee, Tiffany & Co, Cartier and look at the jewellery ranges available.

There is always a diamond to suit every need. The top of the range designer diamond jewellery from Tiffany & Co or Cartier, the mid range diamond jewellery from Lee Hwa, Tian Po and Soo Kee, to even the very very affordable options from Taka Jewellery. Be it a Destinee, Hearts on Fire or Lazare, choose within your budget something that is of quality, value for money. Whatever you proffer eventually, the appreciative will accept it with much gladness.

Just remember to read up on the various Cs of diamond buying prior to presenting your gift so that you can showcase something more than the mesmerising fire of the diamond; your willingness to do the necessary research to find the best gift available. The excitement of receiving a piece of diamond jewellery will fade very fast but the knowledge that you have made effort to choose a good gift will boost the value of the present significantly.

Always keep one thing in mind, while "a diamond is forever", diamond jewellery is for showing off to girl friends. Make sure the recipient of your gift is able to hold her head high and compare her diamond proudly to whatever her friends have. What you cannot afford in carat size can be offset by getting better clarity, cut, colour.

Buying from Taka Jewellery

After spending a bomb on getting my proposal ring, buying a house and throwing a nice hotel dinner banquet, my finances are slightly more stretched these days. As husband and wife, we are working hard to save and bring our savings back up to pre-marriage days.

Since "dangerous" jokes are safer to crack these days, I have often wondered aloud to my wife when we pass by Taka Jewellery outlets if she will like to enter to pick an item since there were sales and the jewellery items were very cheap. However, not once have we successfully stepped into Taka Jewellery nor have we even taken a single flyer from the sales persons. The often swift retort from my wife was that she was "totally not interested" in jewellery from Taka Jewellery and if I bought any item from there as gift for her, she will not wear them.

Our perception of Taka Jewellery, as well as the image the shop and its sales persons potray, is that the shop sells cheap jewellery. Somehow, when we go shopping and end up finding something we like and asking for the price, it is often expensive, not that we were browsing branded products. Perhaps our inner desire for quality products drives our outward manifestation of "expensive taste".

Taka Jewellery definitely has its supporters as I believe it targets the lower income group who will be satisfied with having a piece, any piece, of diamond jewellery regardless of the cut, clarity, colour. To me, how can a shop whose sales persons ever stood in front of the shop yelling at the top of the voice "Lelong lelong! (Lelong is Malay for sale) X items for $XX" be good enough for my wife? Even if I save money buying the jewellery, it brings me no satisfaction when she goes for her girls' night out and puts on cheap pieces of jewellery that does not reflect well on me.

Invest and buy a few good piece of jewellery and it will go a long way. For one, my wife is definitely happy with my choice of the diamond solitaire and has been wearing it often!

Update to Purchase of Proposal Ring

It has been a long while since I bought the Destinee from Lee Hwa and I had not provided any updates so far... The proposal went well and my girl accepted the proposal ring. Things have been moving fast and we have finalised dates for marriage and had been actively making all the necessary wedding arrangements.

The Sparkle of Destinee

Will be presenting the proposal ring soon and took some photos of it so that I can show the world what a nice ring it is.

	The Destinee in the proposal ring box.
Capturing the Destinee from another angle
	Using flash to take this picture to show the brilliance of the diamond.
Taken with flash on top of the ring box
	Destinee's Hearts and Arrows. This picture does not do justice to the Destinee as I was not able to get a good shot through the 10x scope provided.

Final Choice of Diamond

After a hectic search over the weekend, I decided on getting Destinee for my proposal ring. Of the so many diamonds seen, why did I pick Destinee?

Frankly speaking, if I made an option to purchase a less branded diamond from jewellers such as Poh Heng Jewellery, it would have passed off just as fine since both my girl and I are not that into diamonds and will mostly likely not notice the difference. A set of comparable specifications may be had for lower prices and she will have been fine with it since she is not expecting an expensive ring from me.

Cut, clarity, colour and carat are the traditional 4Cs by which diamonds are selected. Destinee diamonds make my life simple since they are AGS certified as triple ideal. Having an ideal cut, I got a good VS1 clarity, the colourless range of F colour and 0.4 carat for slightly over S$4K.

Brilliant Rose was ok but I could only get those below 0.4 carats with my budget. While 0.34 and 0.4 is technically only a difference of 0.06, I believe that there is a pyschological effect when she is asked how many carats the diamond is. Being able to respond 0.4 carats instead of 0.3+ will create a different sort of impact. Furthermore, regardless of how detached we are from the materialistic displays in our society, I want my girl to feel proud wearing a ring from me, me to feel good being able to provide her this little luxury and for the other women who see her wearing it to envy her for owning a nice stunning diamond ring.

As for the True Love and Hearts on Fire ranges, I will not bother to comment more since I have already excluded them from consideration as in my previous posts.

The Destinee ring purchased is too small for my girl and the customer service executive had kindly helped to try expediating the alterations so that it can be ready in the right size in 3 days. Wednesday. The day I will get the proposal ring all ready to be presented.

Wish me luck!

Diamond from Online Store

Besides getting a diamond from one of the stores in the coutry, one option that exists is to look online at the various more credible diamond websites. This will be a good option considering that quite a few of these sites have gotten very good reviews from those who had tried them out.

Getting diamonds online from sites such as Mondera, Good Old Gold, WhiteFlash, etc. holds promise of getting better specifications for the same cost. If I had the time to slowly browse and communicate with the online stores, further time to send the purchased diamond for appraisal and then to get it properly set, I believe I will be taking the online route instead.

Unfortunately, I have procrastinated and left myself little time to pursue the online route in finding the ideal proposal ring. It is an important lesson for those who are seeking to find a good diamond ring for proposal, when not buying an already set diamond, there will be a need to provide for 1 to 2 months to get a proper loose diamond set and ready to be presented to the girl of your destiny.

Hearts on Fire from Tian Po Jewellery

The last stop of my search for a proposal ring brought me to Tian Po Jewellery.

Since I had seen quite a few selections so far, I already know that I want minimum F colour but the sales executive attending to me kept introducing me colours of G and H instead, saying that colour does not matter too much since the Hearts on Fire is so well cut. My research had shown otherwise, that the colour falling into a different band will be obvious and this is the time that I could really see that slight tinge of yellow in the G and H colours.

Maybe I am still very much an amateur diamond buyer but the experience at Tian Po leaves me feeling that the sales executive was not really making the best-informed recommendations. The mitigating factor was that the diamonds were really good and because they were largely unset, it was possible to scrutinise the diamonds properly.

Most of the selection were loose Hearts on Fire diamonds and additional cost will have to be incurred to set the diamond selected.

Carat	Color	Clarity	Cost (S$)
0.402	E	VVS2	6300
0.421	F	VVS1	6460

There will be discounts on the setting for Tian Po members but the cost of Hearts on Fire is much higher than its equivalents. I do not think that first time buyers should go for the Hearts on Fire ranges no matter how good it is. Only when one is much more comfortable with selection of diamonds should there even be consideration about getting Hearts on Fire from Tian Po.

Brilliant Rose from Soo Kee Jewellery

The next range of diamonds that I looked at was Brilliant Rose from Soo Kee.

At this time, I already know that Brilliant Rose is some sort of modified cut. Based on the same budget that I had provided when looking at Destinee, it was only possible to get a diamond in the 0.3 carat range for Brilliant Rose. For a large diamond, the sales executive was recommending some GIA certified range instead since there was a 50% discount on them.

Carat	Color	Clarity	Cost (S$)	Remarks
0.34	F	VVS1	4418	Brilliant Rose
0.54	F	VS2	6358	GIA certified (50% discount)

I find that it does not make sense to get the normal GIA certified ones since the prices appear to have been marked up significantly prior to giving the discount. Also, since I am still such an amateur, I will not be able to select the right diamond. If I go for a Brilliant Rose, I will have to settle for a much smaller diamond.

True Love from SK Jewellery

The next stop was SK Jewellery, the less up-market subsidiary of Soo Kee.

The prices at SK Jewellery is distinctly lower and the range being marketed is True Love.

Carat	Color	Clarity	Cost (S$)
0.5	E	VVS2	5127
0.44	E	IF	3607

There was a 20% discount if payment is made using DBS credit card.

I am not sure if it was the ambience of the place but I did not feel the diamond shown was as good, it appeared that there were noticeable defects in the diamonds that I was shown. Also, the True Love range is certified by IGI instead of the GIA and AGS certification that were being used by the other diamond ranges. Maybe IGI is more forgiving in its certification but I will not know for sure. However, after looking at True Love, it has been effectively eliminated from my consideration range.

Destinee from Lee Hwa Jewellery

The first stop of my search for a proposal ring brought me to Lee Hwa Jewellery. Although I had earlier already read up on how to purchase a diamond, the important aspects to look out for, I went in looking dumb and acting like I had absolutely no clue about how to choose the right diamond for the special one.

The customer service executive who attended to me was extremely patient to teach me about all the basics of diamonds and eventually proposed some options based on the budget that I quoted.

Carat	Color	Clarity	Cost (S$)
0.4	F	VS1	5218
0.41	G	VS2	4788
0.55	G	VS2	7728

With a basic discount of 10% and an additional discount of 10% when paying with Citibank credit card, the 0.4 diamond solitaire fell nicely within my budget.

Since Lee Hwa was the first stop in my search, I decided to look around at the other companies' offerings before making a firm decision. However, I shortlisted 2 of the diamonds and asked for it to be made available at the outlet convenient for me over the weekend for detailed viewing and maybe a decision.

Buying the First Diamond

Like many guys out there, I had never thought of buying a diamond till placed into the situation of having to propose to the girl whom I will like to ask to be my wife.

A proposal ring is a must but its monetary value pales in comparison to its symbolic value. A ring is a ring and a decent one can be obtained at a few hundred dollars. A more elaborate ring can cost a few or even tens of thousands on the other hand.

The important thing is that the proposal ring should not be too expensive to the extent of crippling one financially. A proposal ring is but the first step to a long string of financial commitments such as wedding banquet, bridal packages, housing, renovation, etc.

While I am not rich, financially, I believe I will be able to pamper my girl with a nice diamond proposal ring in the range of S$4000, greatly manageable especially with all the interest free instalments of up to 24 months that are available with credit cards.

The constraint that I had was that the decision to propose was made only very recently and I had a time frame of less than 2 weeks to shop and find the appropriate diamond ring. To get a good ring to propose with within 2 weeks, I hungrily searched out information on diamond selection and purchases from websites and online forums. After I had obtained enough of the diamond information did I start going to the shops to physically look at the diamonds.