Category: Beauty and Fashion

I just want to let you all know that Crabby Housewife is in love – in love with my new Moissanite budget wedding ring. I’ve been married for 26 years and I felt it was time to upgrade my wedding ring a little. I’ve had my eye on white gold instead of the yellow gold I had and I wanted a halo setting with just a little bigger diamond.

However, when I went to local jewelry stores to see how much I might be able to trade my ring in for, I was disgusted. Basically, it was nothing compared to what we payed for it. Even were I to sell it privately, I couldn’t have gotten very much for it. I started to research diamonds and their worth versus what you pay and also some other issues with the diamond industry.

First, a diamond is one of the worst investments you can make. It is even worse than buying a vehicle. The second you walk out of the store it is worth FAR less than you paid for it. In fact, one of the reasons some jewelers have those “trade up” options is because you would be outright insulted were they to offer you what your ring is actually worth when you know full well what you paid them for it.

There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is some clever advertising by the diamond industry and De Beers limiting diamond supply (artificially) and about how a diamond is forever, blah blah blah. Then, there is the whole child slave labor issues, which is even more horrendous, and how difficult it is to be certain the diamond is from a source that doesn’t use child labor.

If you know me at all… If you’ve even read one post from me, you can probably imagine how angry it made me to realize I’d been duped. If you know how stubborn I am, then you probably know that I also vowed to never again throw my money away on a near-worthless diamond. I mean, there are tons of pretty gemstones out there. If I want to throw my money away, I’ll spend less of it and throw it away elsewhere.

Still, I really wanted that pretty white gold ring with the halo I had my eye on. I just knew that I was going to find a cheaper option than a diamond, or at a minimum have my ring reset so I didn’t have to buy another diamond and throw my money away. So, I started researching alternatives to diamonds.

Alternatives to Diamonds

I really kind of wanted the diamond look, I just didn’t want the diamond price without value. I found one ring I adored that was a white topaz. However, topaz is not a very sturdy gem for everyday wear. I also considered:

• Cubic Zirconia – They scratch and cloud up over time, even the expensive ones.
• Opals – I have always loved opals. They have this hidden fire in them. But ultimately, I nixed this idea as I wanted the diamond look.
• Man-made diamonds – chemically, they are exact to an earth-mined diamond
• Moissanite – found in meteors and now lab-created
• White Sapphire – They’re a 9 on the hardness scale, where a diamond is 10. Still, they do scratch a bit easier.
• White Topaz – Same as sapphire

After reading through a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that I really wanted a Moissanite. First, it is a 9.5 on the hardness scale, so very close to a diamond. It holds up well like a diamond. The newer ones are colorless, which means they are also look a LOT like a real diamond (they are a tiny bit more sparkly in my opinion).

The Shape Matters

I started to read some wedding message boards from brides who’d chosen Moissanite. Some chose it because they could be a larger stone for less money. Some for reasons such as an aversion to the diamond industry. Others because they liked the slight color to the older Moissanites, which can tend to pick up a bit of blue, yellow and green.

As I started to read the different places offering the stones and the boards, I learned that the shape makes a difference in the appearance of the gem and how much it looks like a diamond. A smaller, round cut shows less color variation, for example. I loved the look of the cushion cut, though, and I wanted at least 1 carat (I wound up getting a 1.5 carat). My fingers are big and a small gem gets lost on my hand.

Diamond Versus Moissanite

At this point, I wanted to go visit a local jeweler and just price out the ring I wanted. We headed over to Louisville and I was immediately drawn to a halo ring, white gold, thin band. I looked at it and loved it. The price with a diamond? Around $19,000. Yes, you just read that correctly.

I did my best to school my features when the woman said that so I didn’t seem like a complete country bumpkin, but that’s more than I paid for my car, so no. Not going there.

I then started to talk to her about Moissanite, which she had heard of. She mentioned that I could get the cost of the ring down to about $3999 for the setting and another $500 or so for the gem if I went with Moissanite. Okay, now that might seem like a huge savings to some people. I mean, it’s 1/4th the cost, right? You don’t know me if you think I’d spend that much on a ring. That’s crazy. Maybe if I were getting engaged for the first time, but probably not even then.  I took down the ring’s product number and her info, but really had NO intention of buying the ring.

Don’t get me wrong. That ring was beautiful. It sparkled and was everything I wanted – except for the price tag.

Researching the Online Stores

My next step was to check out Moissanite rings online. Almost all of them come from Charles and Colvard, who makes the rings in a lab. I found a huge price difference int he online stores, but I kept being drawn back to MoissaniteCo.com. They seemed to have the largest selection, best prices, and they have the Forever One Moissanite, which is a colorless Moissanite. It is perfectly clear. They also sell the Forever Brilliant, which can have some slight color.

I found two rings I loved. One had a two-tone band and simple round diamond solitaire. However, the other was exactly the ring I’d looked at locally. And, I mean that it was nearly identical.

My reluctance came in from a few bad reviews of the site on the wedding boards. A couple of people were not happy with the customer service they received. I was worried. I would be spending a little over $1000 for the ring and while that was FAR cheaper than the jewelry store version, it is still a lot of money.

I decided to dig deeper. I started to really look at those poor reviews. Nearly all of them had only one or two posts on the board. Strange. In addition, MoissaniteCo.com had gone onto the board and responded and offered to try to make things right or pointed out how they’d tried to make things right already. One or two of the complaints were valid. Meaning that the complaint was over something that I felt the company should have fixed without hesitation.

I then started to read the positive reviews. Most of these were from people with numerous posts (in the hundreds and thousands) and included pictures of beautiful rings. They seemed pretty authentic.

My thoughts? Could it be possible some of the negative reviews were planted from the diamond industry? I mean, if word gets out that diamonds aren’t worth what you pay for them, that there are other issues, and that Moissies look just like a diamond but are a fraction of the cost, wouldn’t that be hurtful to the industry?

Also, on the ones I feel were valid, there is going to be a small percentage of issues with any company selling so many items each week. I looked closely at how MoissaniteCo had responded and decided to email them with a question.

Email Customer Service Only

One thing that kept making me hesitate is that the only way you can contact the company is via email. You can’t simply pick up a phone and call. I was worried if I had a serious problem, it would be hard to contact them. Even though sales is different than support, I decided to email the company with a simple question and see how long it took to get a respond.

It was about 24 hours and I had a polite response to my question from a gentleman named Chris. We corresponded back and forth about the Forever One, etc., and this made me feel comfortable enough to go ahead and place my order.

My Review of MoissaniteCo.Com

My MoissaniteCo.com ring arrived today. Pardon my ugly, unpainted nails. My daughter used up the last of my polish remover and I’m unable to get off the remainder of the lavender and repaint, but the ring will hopefully distract you from my hands.

This ring is absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. It looks EXACTLY like the ring I looked at in the jewelry store. I don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but the center stone is actually round, but the halo gives it a cushion look. I love how the band is very thin. It makes the gemstone really pop out.

The MoissaniteCo website as the most advanced I visited, in that once I found some rings I liked, I could hit this button that said “New 360 degree view”. This was so handy, because it showed me the ring from all angles and on a woman’s hand. I kept coming back to this ring, but there are so many to choose from. Not all are available in the colorless Forever One, so you’ll need to watch what you’re ordering. Or, maybe you want a little color to your Moissie. I didn’t. They also had some GORGEOUS vintage inspired rings that I kept looking at, but the gems in them were smallish (again, fat fingers here).

The ordering process was simple. Choose the ring, choose the stone size, choose the metal, add to cart and order.

The ring was finished right when they said it would be (it was 10 days at the time, but I noticed they’ve upped the time to two weeks now).

I was also impressed with how it arrived. They put it in a beautiful black box inside a wrapper box, inside a bag with tissue paper inside another box and completely enclosed by plastic for shipping. It was just like purchasing from any jewelry store except it came through the mail. Shipping was free, by the way.

I am impressed with MoissaniteCo and will order from them in future. I have my eye on a pair of Moissie earrings. How wonderful that they’ll cost a mere fraction that diamonds would.

I have not had a problem with my ring, so I can’t speak to the customer service at this point other than in asking them simple questions. If you have an authentic experience and want to share it, please comment. If you have a Moissanite ring and love it, let me know that, too.

My hope is that someone out there thinking about getting engaged will see this article and realize you don’t have to spend a house down payment or forgo your honeymoon to buy a beautiful engagement ring. In fact, if you don’t want anyone else to know the ring isn’t a diamond, you can easily keep that information to yourself. My Moissanite is a bit shinier than my real diamond, but not so much that it looks fake. I actually think it is a prettier gem because I love bling.

I can say I happily recommend MoissaniteCo.com. I’ve not been paid by them in any way, nor have I gotten any free products. This is my honest assessment as one of their customers. You’ll save a ton of money going with a Moissanite over a diamond. You’ll save more by buying it online.