Congratulations! If you’re looking into engagement rings that means there must be someone special in your life and you two are talking FUTURE! Now let’s get into what you came here for. How to find your dream engagement ring without breaking the bank.

If you’ve already started looking into engagement rings, you are starting to realize how much the prices vary. You’re learning about factors you didn’t know existed: cut, clarity, sizes, shapes and so much more. Before your start feeling overwhelmed, allow me to calm your nerves and break down this ring hunt in 3 simple steps. Let’s do this!

Step 1. Set a budget

I’m sure you may have heard this a million times and that’s because it is the best first step you can do to save money. Without looking and shopping around, off the top of your head how much can you/your significant other afford?

Don’t worry about setting a price thats “too low” or “too high”, either way it IS possible to find the ring of your dreams within that budget. I’ll walk you through how after this step, but first write down that budget on a piece of paper and stick to it!

Step 2. Know what suits you!

I always imagined myself having a beautiful round diamond with a silver band. It was the ring of my dreams for YEARS. It wasn’t until I actually went ring shopping with John to try on different styles that I discovered the round diamond was not all I pictured it to be. For some reason that shape on me made my finger look wider and shorter than it actually was. We tried out a few more shapes and discovered that what I felt the most confident wearing and thought looked best on me was a halo cushion cut.

I’m so happy John didn’t buy a round-cut diamond based on what I “thought” I liked. Next time you’re at the mall, go to a ring store, figure out what your ring size is and try on different shapes of diamonds to know what suits your hand!

Step 3. Evaluate what’s important to you. BOTH of you.

Take a moment to weigh what is more important to you. How much you spend, the quality of the diamond, how the diamond is made, carrots?

John and I had two completely different thoughts here. I didn’t want him to spend more on my ring than he would on a camera. Anytime we were looking together in the store, I would always walk straight to the clearance case and point out small dainty rings that didn’t hurt the imaginary bank in my brain. John on the other hand wanted to find a HUGE ring that would make people stop and stare, he wanted it to be AT LEAST 2 carats.

We had already tried on rings in the store at this point so we knew what I liked. Now we tried to “create your own” ring on engagement ring websites. This is where we found ourselves in a frustrating predicament. Anytime we would create my ideal ring on these websites, it would end up being 4k+!!! Which was WAAAY OUT OF OUR BUDGET.

So we took a step back to do some research and started to evaluate what really mattered. Our research taught us that the truest diamonds are “mined”, likely in harsh work conditions, which didn’t feel right to us.

We wrote down our top 3 values that we didn’t want to compromise.

• John wanted me to have a “head-turning” ring.

• I didn’t want John to spend more than 2k.

• We wanted our diamond to be created in the safest work environment.

This is where we started looking into lab-created diamond alternatives and found Diamond Nexus. Yes, there are a lot of online engagement ring stores with diamond alternatives that you can look into and explore.

Here are some real reasons why we ended up choosing Diamond Nexus for our ring choice.

1. The pricing. We truly didn’t find any other website with better pricing and quality rings.

2. The reviews. It’s always scary buying anything online without seeing it in person first. The reviews helped us feel more relieved reading about others loving their rings.

3. Their social media. We love a good company that is active on social media! You can tell they are constantly creating, they always have videos/photos on their stories showing off their rings and you can see the quality in their posts.

4. They’re the ONLY place online that had my ring size. Let’s be real for a second. There were a few rings that I LOVED from multiple different websites John sent me. When John was deciding, he fell in love with the rose gold customization, their simple online checkout AND they ended up being the only website that carried my oddly unique ring size, 4.25.

There you go!

I hope these tips helped you with your engagement ring hunt. These are the exact steps John and I took to find my engagement ring without killing his bank account and I am over the moon happy with what he found for our future.

Shop my ring here!

Xoxo,

Millie