Engagement Rings - How to Buy a Diamond

The moment a man proposes to a woman is undoubtedly the most important of their lives. He has usually planned out the whole affair, arranged the place and created a mood conducive to love and romance. As he pops the question, "Will you marry me?" he opens the little velvet box and presents his sweetheart with what they both expect will be a permanent symbol of his affection and devotion. Not only does the poor guy have to worry if she will say yes, he must also stress about the details of exactly which ring to buy. It is the custom these days that men should spend two to three months salary on engagement rings to present to the women they love. Diamond rings depending on such factors of quality based on colour, cut and clarity; and the size called carat. Carat as it applies to precious gems is a measure of weight and is two tenths of one gram. When selecting a ring, the man must weigh some of these factors against the personality traits of his fiancée.

Would she prefer the biggest stone he can afford even if it is of a lesser quality, perhaps with a few tiny flaws? Or would she rather have a ring with excellent clarity and colour but somewhat smaller? After the recent movie, Blood Diamond, many people worried that their diamonds were in any way connected to the bloodshed shown in the film. The U.N. first recognized the phenomenon of "conflict diamonds" in 1998. By the spring of 2000, the diamond industry was already working on the problem. They arranged a series of meetings to plan the means to stop the trafficking of blood diamonds. They created a system by which all diamonds would be certified assuring buyers that the diamonds that they were choosing for their engagement rings were not connected in any way to the atrocities. In July of that year, the World Diamond Congress released regulations making it easier to stop the sale of these tainted diamonds.

They implemented an internationally certification procedure for the import and export of diamonds requiring all countries to allow only sealed packets of diamonds to cross their borders. These rules resulted in the incidence of blood diamonds being reduced to less than 1% of all diamonds sold today so there is almost no chance of one of these diamonds being set into any engagement rings. Also available and becoming more popular, are synthetically created diamonds which allow for the purchase of a larger stone of better quality. These gems are made the same way as they are in nature but the process takes place in a laboratory in a much shorter period of time using a combination of high heat and high pressure. There is also the possibility of buying a "manipulated" diamond which produces several brilliant colours without the high cost of those occurring naturally. This involves subjecting less desirable coloured diamonds to irradiation followed by the application of intense heat.