Just dropped 1500 on a diamond for my engagement ring!!!

[kn]

mrstickball said:
KN - how much did YOU spend proposing?

The price doesn't matter to GUYS, but with my GF - she cared a bit.

I'm not saying you need an insane rock of a ring to be married. After a certain point, it gets stupid and selfish - money on a small diamond is kinda stupid at points if you overdo it.

However, to women, they feel (atleast mine does), if you spend a bit of money on a ring, it shows where your prorities are - most of us will drop $1k on a good HDTV, but far less on a good woman. It shouldn't work that way.

 I bought my wife's ring from a TRUE wholesaler.  I picked out a diamond and came up with a custom band that I borrowed from a couple of designs.  They put the ring together for me and I think it was a .58 carat if I remember correctly.  D Color, V.V.S.1, 60/60 stone.  It was set in a "channel mount" platinum band.  I don't remember exactly but it was about $1,850 or something like that.  Sure, I wanted bigger, but that was a very, very high quality stone for the price.   The interesting thing about this particular company is that they offer 100% of your money back in trade toward something else.  As I made more money, my wife asked if she could get something a little bigger.  She now has something that is right a 1 carat and again is an exceptional stone.  It was set in a mount that tiffany sells for about 2 grand (diamonds on the side) but he ordered it from a contractor that does work for tiffany and we got it with equal quality tiny stones.  If I remember correctly, it was just under $6 grand (minus the 100% trade on first stone mean just over 4 grand or so for the upgrade).

I'm not hurting for money and I can tell you that 6 grand is the end of the road.  There won't be a bigger stone...

To more directly answer your question, I would consider getting some kind of matching pair of rings for an engagement.  Once the "yes" arrives, pick out the ring together... She'll be in the game and a lot more aware of the debt she is taking on for the sake of the ring.  Strangely enough, I suspect this just might inject a dose of sensibility in buying jewelry...

It is a personal thing and "how much to spend" is a difficult question to answer but I do know that if you have to buy it on credit, you should be buying it...