Fear the Crab

A few months ago, Maile and I bought a loose diamond for her engagement ring. We got a 1.30 H VS1 solitaire for a reasonable price, and even though it’s a VS1 you can hardly see the inclusions. We put both the diamond and the certificate in my safe until we were ready to have it set.

A few weeks ago, Maile found a wedding band set that she really liked, so we arranged for the jeweler to work on it. The engagement band had embedded princess-cut diamonds, and the same for the wedding band. The total weight for all rocks in this set was 1.50. I think the mount was meant for another princess cut, so we had to order a different head to fit the solitaire.

Already this was burning holes in our pockets, but Maile was happy, and when Maile is happy, my headaches go away.

The diamond was set a couple of nights ago. When Maile brought it home, she called me to say she was starting to have second thoughts about the diamond we bought. She said the color was “rather warm,” meaning that it was more yellow than she once thought. I asked what she thought the color should be, and both her and her mom feel the diamond is more of an I-color. Then I asked what she wanted to do, even though inside I knew what she was going to say.

Maile wants to contact the vendor for our diamond and see if there are better colors in stock. This, of course, would mean a much higher price than what we already paid, and I’m wincing at the thought of having to shell out more when we’re currently operating on thin strings. Maybe later on in life we’d be able to afford an upgrade, but for now I’m thinking that despite everyone else admiring the diamond as a quality rock, in the back of her head Maile is going to constantly see the “warm” color of yellow. And when Maile sees something that concerns her, she feels compelled to take care of it right away. Much like me. And when we can’t take care of something right away, we’ll fret about it and be unable to focus on anything else.

Last night as we were talking, Maile mentioned to me that she was thinking of going to try to find a lower weight diamond with better color, perhaps a 1.20 or 1.25 with G color. That makes me feel a lot better, because that means the price shouldn’t be THAT much different from what we paid. I could even go upwards of a $200 difference if we couldn’t haggle the price. But, if the difference was more than that, Maile and I both think we’d be better off waiting.

So we’ll see what happens.