I went home for thanksgiving not really expecting to buy a ring or get engaged or really any of that sort of thing, my main thing was taking Tara's parents out to eat and asking them for their blessing. Which as you can imagine, I was already freaking out about.
So the tuesday before Thanksgiving my mom and I decided to go shopping at the Greenwood Mall in Greenwood Indiana (I'm from and my parents currently live in Columbus Indiana). I basically turned into an all day all jewelery store shopping day. I really enjoyed it and I learned so much about rings and diamonds and cuts and clarity and on and on and and and.
We easily went to over 15 stores just that day (not to mention the million stores I went to in Michigan). Basically, when I got my tax return last year, I put a certain amount away for a ring and never touched it. I did add a couple hundred to it over the year so I had a little cash to deal with. (This is of course added to my emergency fund, just keeping Mr. Ramsey AND Mr. Murphy off my back). All of the rings I wanted to get Tara were around $1300 to $1500, the ones under that were just too little, carat wise, and the clarity and color were just too blah. So I started to get a little disapointed.
The last store we went to had a million red signs screaming "STORE CLOSING . . 70-90% OFF!!" So I thought, "How good can this be?"
So we went in and I said I have X number amount to spend and I can't spend anything over that, they had the same rings people were selling for $1500 for literally $600. But I have more than that to spend (if you can't do the math on an estimate I had to spend then . . . .) and if they were selling these things for a great price I wanted to get as much for my money as I possibly could.
Just as I told him how much I wanted to spend again, his partner walked by and said . . .wait . . . hold on, I have just the ring!
She went in the back and pulled out one of the most beautiful rings I've ever seen. I knew this was the one. It took me a while to get there, but deep down I knew. When my mom saw it she was like, get it. GET IT.
The tag on the ring said $4999 but I know how much they mark these things up. (Tara already knows all this, she asked because they wanted to make sure I didn't go broke and go into debt with this ring, haha, but seriously.)
So I bought the ring for exactly how much I wanted to spend, actually, it was $69 more because of tax but I can't complain.
Not that anyone cares but I'm so proud of the fact that I shopped around like crazy and prayed like crazy and gave it all to God and he definitely rewared that. Here are the stats on the ring. It's a .75ct, G VSI with an 18k gold band with 2 little .06ct diamonds on the side. I'll upload a picture.
Maybe I shouldn't put all this info in a blog but I'm so happy and this is just another of many confirmations that makes me feel that God is in this marriage and that Tara is definitely the one that God has for me.Last Saturday Tara and I got the ring appraised for insurance purposes and we drove to Toledo to see a guy who is one of 13 in the country. He travels all over the world and is certified by the GIA, ICGA, on and on. Basically he will appraise the diamond and ring right there in front of you. He also is a non interested party because he is not selling the ring nor trying to buy it off us. I just didn't feel comfortable leaving a diamond at a jeweler for weeks to have them appraise it.
When he heard how much I paid he said, "Some one got in big trouble for selling you this at what they did." Long story short it appraised for $5445.25 and he said the cut is excellent, which is very rare apparently. The coolest thing was that he wrote up a whole 3 page appraisal on the ring's diameter, how it tapers from .09mm to blah blah and the total carat weight and the weight of the gold and the diamond and this and that. Basically someone could take his measurements and recreate the ring. He does this so if, God forbid, we ever have an insurance claim on it and they have to replace it, they have to replace it with the indentical ring (or something exactly equal or greater) than what we have now, even if it costs them $10,000. As apposed to, here's a ring that is worth $5445.25, good luck. Pretty cool stuff.
So praise God! It's now insured and everything is ready to go on that end. Tara is thrilled and I'm thrilled and everyone is thrilled.
Next Blog, I'll tell you about how I asked her to be my better half.
Until next time!
0 comments:
Post a Comment