Yay! My new ring arrived yesterday! We were both very excited when the DHL guy showed up. The box was huge – they padded it well. The actual presentation of the ring was great. They had a white box tied with ribbon, and inside it were two smaller boxes, also tied with ribbon. One box had two chocolates in it (aw, how sweet!) and the other had a beautiful wooden ring box, with my new ring inside. It’s perfect, except that I ordered the wrong size. So sad, cause I had to send it back to get re-sized, so I only wore it for one day so far. Before I ordered the ring, I measured my finger with a piece of string, using a ring size gauge I found on line. But I guess I was off a bit – it doesn’t take much, since the sizes are only a couple mm from each other. Anyway, I ordered a 5.5, and it was flopping around all over my finger. I called the company to see about resizing, and they suggested that I go to a jeweler to get my finger sized, since they only do one free resizing. So this morning I went over to the Shane Company, and they said I’m a 4.5 – good thing I didn’t just send the ring back and ask them to take it down to a 5 (that’s what I had planned to do before the guy said I should go get sized by someone who knows what they’re doing). I guess I have really skinny (bony?) fingers.
So I sent the ring back today, and now I have to wait for it all over again. But at least I’ve seen it and I know how great it is. I’m so glad that we made the decision to sell my old one and get this one instead. The money we got from the first one has been divided up between our HSA and my Roth IRA, and the new ring is just as good as the old one. The craftsmanship of the ring itself is perfect – equal to what I had before. And the “diamond” is awesome. Unless I tell them (which I have no problem doing), no one would ever know that it wasn’t mined out of the ground in Africa. I’m going to let both of my brothers know about my new ring. I can’t imagine either of them marrying a girl who gave a rat’s ass about getting a “real” diamond – so this would work great for them. I would never recommend deception – it wouldn’t be good to let someone think you spent $5,000 on a ring when you actually spent $400, but if both people agree that it’s a great deal, then it’s a great deal.
tanyetta says
can’t wait to see it on your finger :)
congrats :)
Jenn @ Frugal Upstate says
I’m glad you are so happy with your ring-it sounds like it was the right choice for you! (personally I like my diamond, but as my MIL says, the world would be a boring place if everyone was the same) What a bummer that you had to send it back though, especially after seeing how pretty it was and getting to wear it for a day.
The only thing I can say about the difference between a real diamond and a CZ is that a real diamond will continue to shine and sparkle even when it is really dirty, where as a CZ needs to be cleaned more frequently to keep it sparkling. (I’m really bad and only clean my wedding ring about once every 4 or 5 months-basically on the rare occasions when I’m in the Mall I ask whatever jewlery store I go by to clean it for me-they do that for free and check the prongs).
Enjoy your new ring when it comes back!
FrugalBabe says
Yeah, I was really bad about getting my first ring cleaned – I would take it to Shane about once every 7 months or so… but one time when I was there, the lady who cleaned it told me that I could just use glass cleaner and a toothbrush on it whenever I wanted. So I would spray it with vinegar and scrub it for a few seconds, and it would be almost as good as new. I plan to do that with this ring aswell.