Never bought her a diamond

Never even bought a ring

Never even got married with a giant ceremony or big event

Been together for over 30 years, bought property and all kinds of things, traveled to over 30 countries. Still not married.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Rings are socially relevant demarcations of sexual availability. Diamonds are just shiny rocks. Frankly, rings with any stones in them piss me off. They catch on your clothes and rip your favorite fucking sweater, and it’s laundry day so you can’t even grab something else because your other clothes are soaked in vomit because projectile vomiting all over a crowd is the most reasonable course of action when you’re a dumb asshole dicking around on a balcony on new years, apparently.

Lab grown emeralds are a couple hundred bucks and are way prettier than diamonds.

Wife and I decided on moissanite. It's big, extra sparkly, and was at the time 1/10 the price a similar diamond would be. Almost as hard, too - won't get scratched except by another moissanite or a diamond.

If it loses 50-80% of the value as soon as it's used, might as well get a used one if you must have a natural diamond. This also applies to cars and plenty of other things. Let someone with more money than you take the hit.

Damn, one of these without a "fake and gay" explanation, and I'm too tired to think of a good one. I've never gotten to be the fake and gay guy, and I'm missing my chance D:

But anyway, as others have said, lab grown, vintage, there are other options.

But has anyone considered a rock that doesn't just look like glass? There are so many cool rocks out there, people! I'd literally rather have a piece of quartz that my SO and I found together turned into a ring than I would have a piece of a much fancier/"valuable" stone that I have no attachment to.

When my parents got married, they had gone gem mining at one of those places with the troughs of dirt, and you pan it yourself. They found some rubies, and had wedding rings made from those. How fucking cool is that? Way cooler than a thing you have no connection to, I think.

Wait until he finds out how much the reception will cost.

So don't buy one. My girlfriend's will be getting one of those rings made of tungsten. Have you seen them they look amazing. It's simultaneously looks like something some elvish jewellery merchant made while at the same time looking like it made also activate the halo rings.

A diamond is just shiny.

Of course it's important to discuss these things with your partner in advance. Whether or not they would be happy with a non-diamond ring depends very much on the person. But it might be worth advocating for them because they look really nice and they are quite expensive but they're honestly more interesting than the diamond and ethically sourced. There's no such thing as blood tungsten.

One of the ideas I had years ago was to get an uncut puck of lab diamond, (at the time this was ~$1500 from one place, probably cheaper now) find a lapidary and get them to cut out a literal diamond ring, a ring made entirely of solid diamond, and then my spouse could say 'That's not a diamond ring. This is a diamond ring.' in a cheesy Aussie accent.

Check with your partner and see what kind of ring they want for their engagement.

I went to the jewelry store with my partner and shopped for her engagement ring. Ended up doing a custom piece with a rose-gold band and a couple of blue topaz gems. She wanted a ring that would fit comfortably under exam gloves (she worked in a lab at the time). She's much happier with it than a big heavy pointy rock, and it was way cheaper (like 450 for the whole ring).

White sapphire is even cheaper than moissanite and most people don't know any better. It's a little less durable than diamond but looks a lot like a natural diamond. My wife cared more about the look than the actual pricetag, so I got what looks like thousands of dollars worth of ring for less than 10% of that. She's clumsy, so if she bumps into something and the stone pops out and gets lost, no big deal.

Discuss with your partner. Do not try to trick them by getting them a diamond alternative and then telling them it's a diamond. A reasonable partner (imo) would rather put some of that money towards the wedding and/or marriage itself rather than into a ring. Get the wedding menu you really want or put it towards a house down payment or new furniture or something.

There is one type of natural diamond that doesn't lose its value. Those are mine cut diamonds. They haven't cut them at the mines since before the cartels took over. I found this out one day, because my GF would wear her late grandmother's wedding and engagement bands. We got curious one day, and wandered into the fancy jewelry story in the mall. I said to the guy, "I know you can't give us an official appraisal, but could you take a look and give us a ballpark." He slipped the loupe on and took a look. Immediately he said something like, "Oh, wow! Haven't seen one of these before." He explained that all 20 of the ¼ carat diamonds and the large 2 carat diamond were all mine cut, so the engagement band could have fetched $100,000 and the wedding band was worth about $250,0000 in 2000 dollars.

Needless to say, she stopped wearing it frequently after she found out.

I buy my wife jewelry with artificial diamonds, not because she wants it, but because I love to see her wearing it. She calls me a magpie for good reason.

Ooh sparkly things!

The obvious answer is to buy a large synthetic one. It's still real.

So do what my better half and i did - buy a ring from Etsy with a lab-grown stone.