Natural or lab-grown? Cash or card? Buying a diamond engagement ring is a huge decision - and big isn’t always better

Something happens to our social media feeds this time of year. Close-ups of left hands around champagne glasses suddenly start taking over, with pseudo-cryptic captions such as “she said yes” and “forever starts now”.

We’re in the thick of proposal season, with December remaining the most popular month for couples in Ireland and the US to get engaged. This makes sense given that Christmas comes with time off and family reunions – the perfect conditions for couples to celebrate their good news with their loved ones.

“Before Christmas we get a lot of guys coming in on their own,” says Martin Commins, jeweller and owner of Bespoke Diamonds.

However, January and February are the busiest months for couples – who make up the majority of Commins’s customers – coming in to choose and purchase the engagement ring together.

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Buying an engagement ring is a major financial decision, and it’s sensible that it should be a joint one for some couples who might have competing money priorities – such as saving for a house deposit or childcare costs, or taking time off work to go back to college.

[ John Weldon: ‘Don’t buy her a diamond ring without her express input’ ]

According to Bespoke Diamonds’ annual data, the average 2023 spend on an engagement ring was €7,800 for a natural diamond, but €3,200 for a lab-grown stone. Some 65 per cent of their customers opted for the lab-grown option, which usually means cheaper prices for larger carats. Overall, the numbers represented a jump on last year’s average ring spend of €2,312.

Galwegians tended to drop the most cash on an engagement ring, with the county-by-county breakdown showing the average price of a ring purchased by customers from Galway to be €6,425. They were followed by Cork at €6,325 and Limerick at €5,325. In what must be a relief to the good people of Cavan (€3,822), Roscommon claimed the lowest average ring price – at €3,458.

According to Bespoke, Dublin was 25th on the list, with an average price of €3,706, although the second most expensive ring last year was bought in the capital, at €39,500. The most expensive ring was bought in Cork for €52,000. Both were round natural diamonds.

Buying an engagement ring can be a fraught business. Often it is a person’s first major jewellery purchase, and it’s an incredibly expensive and emotional one. Most of the time, many of us don’t have a clue what we’re doing, which is dangerous when we’re being handed glasses of champagne by salespeople showing us thousands of dollars worth of shiny things.

Unlike the old days where couples went to the one jeweller in town, or maybe if they were lucky got Granny’s hand-me-down ring, modern couples now have a head-swimming amount of things to consider. Lab-grown or natural stones? New or vintage? Is the stone sustainably and ethically sourced?

The options seem endless and it can be hard to know where to start, so here’s a guide to the less-romantic money side of engagement rings.

There is no ‘right’ amount of money to spend on a ring

The often-quoted rule that an engagement ring should cost the equivalent of three months’ salary originated, unsurprisingly, from an ad campaign for a diamond company.

“It’s absolute nonsense,” warns Commins, who advises against “feeling obliged” to spend any set amount.

In fact, Commins says he feels people can get guided too much by price, at the expense of picking the ring that will look best on their partner.

“Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to spend it,” he says. “Don’t make the budget become a target, because they can leave with a ring that doesn’t suit their fiance’s hand and there was no need for it to be that large.”

Think hard about payment methods

Ideally, nearly-weds should be able to pay for their perfectly in-budget dream ring out of the savings they’d been putting aside for months for this very occasion. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and for whatever reason, people might find themselves needing a loan in order to put a ring on it.

Some jewellers offer their own financing, sometimes with tempting interest-free periods, but before signing on the dotted line it’s always important to understand fees, repayment schedules, interest rates and penalties for situations such as late payment or paying off the debt early.

[ The rules of engagement rings: know your diamond’s cut and carat ]

Third-party buy-now, pay-later services may be available to certain customers depending on their agreement with the retailer. Irish-based fintech Humm advertises Weir & Sons and Chupi Jewellery as partners on its website, which says purchases up to €30,000 can be covered and repaid over six years with certain retailers in some cases.

To cover a €4,500 purchase with monthly repayments over 36 months with an interest-only period of 18 months, Humm’s online tool quoted the total amount repayable to be €4,867.05. That extra €367.5 was broken down into €201.05 paid in interest but €166 coming from fees alone, including the monthly account-keeping fee of €3.50 and the €40 application fee.

It’s important to consider whether you would still have bought that ring if it cost hundreds more in the shop at the time – or would you have left it?

Given the high interest rates on credit cards, it would in most cases be best to steer clear of putting an expensive ring purchase on any of them.

However, if it’s a romantic emergency, check to see whether your card offers an instalment plan for larger purchases that attract lower interest rates if the conditions are met. For example, Bank of Ireland advertises an instalment plan for credit card customers for purchases of more than €250 at a much lower interest rate of 6.7 per cent APR, compared to the 22.1 per cent APR currently listed on the BOI Classic Credit Card.

Matthew Weldon, owner of Courtville Antiques, says there are other options to consider instead of credit.

“We offer layaway, where you pay a third of the price as a deposit, then you can pay the balance in three months while it’s put away in the shop,” he says.

That way, no one else can buy your special piece, you pay it off without any interest, and it’s hidden away safely if you want it to be a surprise.

Something old, rather than something new

It’s never been cooler to own something that someone else had first, such as vintage fashion, furniture and jewellery, an approach set to remain popular with millennials and Gen Z. Just ask Weldon, who has amassed 180,000-plus followers on TikTok showing off the pieces in his Powerscourt Townhouse shop.

Aside from their obvious aesthetic appeal, Weldon says antique pieces also have an ethical upside.

“It’s actually easier to avoid conflict diamonds if you are shopping for rings made pre-1910,″ says Weldon, adding that many stones of that time came from alluvial mining, which saw gems panned for in rivers rather than cut from the earth.

“At that time most miners were small family businesses, and while no industry is perfect, those early ones environmentally were less invasive then the large diamond deposits found in South Africa later.”

[ Chupi Sweetman: ‘We are the first generation to buy our own diamonds, owning our own future’ ]

Weldon, a chartered accountant before taking over Courtville Antiques, says that buying vintage can net you a better deal thanks to a reduced VAT rate, because qualifying vintage goods can help you avail of a margin scheme.

“Let’s say you buy a ring new for €10, you just paid roughly €2 euro of tax, so the ring is only costing €8 – but if we buy a ring for €9 and sell for €10, we only pay VAT on the €1,″ he says. “So you’re actually buying a lot more ring for the same amount and that’s not considering that we buy things preloved at better prices than new pieces, so it’s a compounding effect.”

Weldon warns buyers to do their homework and to make sure their jeweller is a member of the Irish Antique Dealers Association.

Lab-grown or natural stone?

Lab-grown stones saw a 38 per cent rise in global sales from 2021-2022, according to CNN, with jewellery brands popular with millennials, such as Pandora and Chupi, proudly marketing them in collections. Often touted as carbon-neutral and ethical because they don’t involve invasive mining practices or association with conflicts, they also appeal to the more budget-conscious.

For larger stones, Commins says lab-grown diamonds could be “50 to 70 per cent less expensive” compared to traditional ones.

“For a 2.5-carat diamond you would be looking at €20,000-plus for a natural stone compared to about €5,000 tops for lab-grown, and the bigger you go, the more you see those savings.”

According to Commins’s store data, the majority of his clients from every county opted for lab-made over natural stones. He estimates in the past three years he has seen “70-80 per cent growth” in demand for lab-grown stones.

They might be cheaper, but can people tell the difference?

“Only if you carbon date it, and you’d need to go across the road to the National Museum to see that,” says Commins in his Dublin shop.

“I always say it’s like trying to tell if a person was conceived naturally or through IVF – when you meet them, you can’t.”

However, what is noticeably different between lab-grown and natural stones is their market value, which means even though they are cheaper for some people, they might not represent the best bang for their buck.

“Price is what you pay, value is what you get,” explains Weldon. “The price you get with lab-grown is lower, but you could be taking a 90 per cent-plus hit on the resale value.”

Commins agrees that while the price of lab-grown diamonds fell in the past 12 months (as did natural stones to a lesser extent), customers buying them for engagement rings hopefully will be wearing them for a long time and won’t be concerned with the resale value.

“I wouldn’t ever advise buying an engagement ring as an investment, it’s something to enjoy,” he says. “If somebody wants to invest, they’re better off buying a bar of gold.”