I don’t think you should choose a ring before you meet the girl, and I don’t think you should choose the girl based on if she likes the same ring as you.
However, if you meet a nice girl, and she likes tanzanite, and she’s not horribly clutzy, or is ok with needing to get the stone replace once and a while, go for it.
I should have reduced my comments to something simple like that.
A woman at my old job bought her wedding dress long before she met the man she eventually would marry. She said that she went to one of those running-of-the-brides events and saw what she knew she wanted, at a good price. She kept it under her bed.
I requested an opal (5.5 - 6.5 hardness) for my engagement ring. My husband found a beautiful opal and had it set appropriately (it is protected around its edges by the metal) and I have worn it constantly for going on 12 years now (except when I make meatloaf or hamburger patties - Eww). No problems whatsoever, and I do lots of yard and garden work.
I also endorse the idea that you need to wait and see what your fiance would like - what if my husband had bought a giant diamond a year before he met me? He would have been very disappointed.
Those of you saying he shouldn’t buy a ring for a woman he hasn’t met - while I agree with you that it’s creepy, he didn’t say he hasn’t met this woman. I read it more as his having a girlfriend and he’s thinking about proposing one of these days, and is starting to explore ring options.
There’s a difference between this and a man picking out an engagement ring before he’s met a woman to give it to, though. One big difference is that it’s the woman who picked out the wedding dress, and it’s the woman who wears the wedding dress.
There are also women who pick out their engagement rings before they’ve met someone they want to marry. A friend of mine has a requirement that her engagement ring has at least $10,000 worth of diamonds. Maybe one day she’ll meet someone rich enough for her tastes.
One is presumptuous; the other very vaguely creepy.
I’m not saying which is which.
And they’re both a bit pathetic.
She should focus her search on people who have more dollars than sense.
I know somebody who’s been wearing a large tanzanite solitaire in her engagement ring for about 3 years now, and she doesn’t seem to have any problems with it (except once it fell out of the setting, but the stone doesn’t appear to have been damaged). But she doesn’t bang up her hands much.
Agree emphatically that the recipient should help pick out an engagement ring, though. In the meantime, if you want a ring for the actual proposal, get something cheap and cute with some sentimental significance that she could wear for sports/outdoor activities when she doesn’t want to risk her fancy ring.
Make sure the proposal ring is something that doesn’t look at all like a traditional engagement ring, so there won’t be an awkward moment when she thinks “Is that it?” and tries to look thrilled with it. I know a guy who gave his girl a selection of colored enamel cloisonne bands; she had fun mixing and matching them as casual jewelry after she acquired the Official Solitaire on her third finger.
You’re reading my post as I intended it to be read.
I left my post purposely vague, so that one of the (several) people that knows my real-life name and my handle doesn’t begin real-life rumors circulating as a result of a message board post.
Notes:
Have you considered the many colored varieties of created stones? They can make created rubies and sapphires in tons of colors, and then you KNOW there’s not even a whiff of colonial oppression. (My engagement ring is my grandmother’s old setting, reset with a created emerald.)
Zsofia,
I appreciate your kind offer of advice. I’ll ask you to confine this to private messages or create a separate thread to avoid derailing this thread.
Oh, that’s a very different story.
I’d still worry a bit about the hardness of tanzanite.
Well then go for it! Even if it means replacing the stone now and again if Tanzinite is her fave I don’t think she’ll mind.
Once she did develop a boyfriend, we chuckled a bit that there was a certain horror-movie quality to him unsuspectingly banging her on her bed, while the wedding dress lurked underneath. Something like Poltergeist and the burial ground.
All very different from the way it first sounded. When the time comes, good luck!
I looked into the topic of non-diamond e-rings a lot when I recently became engaged, because I am morally opposed to the diamond industry and consider retail diamond prices to be a total rip-off. I ended up getting a moissanite ring myself.
Some people do get lucky and are able to keep an engagement ring with a soft stone looking nice, but if you want a non-diamond stone that you don’t have to worry about, you probably want to stick with moissanite, sapphire, or ruby as the main stone of the ring.
If you look at vintage engagement rings, you’ll notice that sapphires were a common choice in engagement rings before the DeBeers marketing convinced people to think “engagement = diamond”. Sapphire seems to be making a comeback these days thanks to the anti-diamond sentiment that’s rising and Princess Kate’s engagement ring. It comes in many pretty colors (not just blue) and purple sapphire might be a good alternative to tanzanite, IMO. If you’re sure she wants a colored stone as the main stone, I would probably opt for the purple sapphire, myself.
If you are dead-set on using tanzanite in a ring, I’d suggest using it as side stones and ideally in a protected setting like a channel setting or bezel setting. That would help it stay safe. Prong settings don’t protect the stone very well.
In addition to the risk of a softer stone being scratch or worn down, another problem you might run into is that the settings these stones are put in (if you’re not getting it custom made) are frequently less durable than a good quality engagement ring setting, and not really intended for daily wear like a decent engagement ring setting is.
Myself, I ended up with a very nice looking semi-customized ring from moissaniteco.com. I’m a big fan of moissanite and I encourage you to research it if you think your lady might be interested in a colorless stone that’s not a diamond.
According to DeBeers, you should spend 2 1/2 months salary on a DIAMOND ring-you cheapskate! What kind of woman would take less?
The OP might consider going to a gem show and buying a tanzanite stone he likes and then keeping it until he finds the lady, and then asking her what she thinks about tanzanites. He can then have the stone made into an engagement ring, pendant, cocktail ring, or other piece to suit her tastes.