In 7 months from today Mark and I are getting married.  This marks the halfway point from when we got engaged in August until our wedding.  I cannot believe how quickly the time has gone… and there is so much still to do for the wedding!  Even after attending weddings every weekend for years, I still had no clue how much goes into actually planning a wedding!

I had intended to blog about my planning process, but somehow… I didn’t. 🙂 For the second half of my engagement and continuing after the wedding I’m going to write a weekly blog feature on some aspect of wedding planning. So be sure to check back every Wednesdays!

Sooo, I’m going to start at the beginning. If you read my blog about getting engaged back in August you would know that when Mark proposed it wasn’t exactly a surprise. We had been looking at rings together, and really tried to educate ourselves about diamonds since it was a big investment. After we had a pretty good understandimh of the 4cs and our budget we compared various options both in store and online. The thing I really love about diamonds is that when you buy a certified diamond you can really compare apples to apples. We ended up deciding on www.adiamor.com based on three factors: they had awesome reviews, great customer service, and the best prices around. I ended up choosing the setting and Mark choose the stone. Here’s a shot of the ring from Adiamor’s website.

Right after Mark proposed I was worried that I would find the ring uncomfortable because of the knife edge along the band. When we called to ask about the return policy the customer service was great. They’ll except returns on anything for up to 30 days, even though each ring is set just for you.

The very best part of using Adiamor is how much money we (well, Mark) saved. Since we could compare GIA certified stones with the specific criteria we wanted from store to store, it made it very clear that Adimor had by FAR the best prices – thousands lest for a similar stone than local stores, and about $1000 less than a similar stone at another reputable online store. That is a ton of money to save that could be invested in other ways, say a great wedding photographer 🙂 Best of all, when we had it appraised it appraised for 30% more than we paid.  The bargain hunter in me was thrilled to say the least!

Adiamor features so many beautiful rings, and since I don’t like to blog without pictures, here are a few more of my favorites from their website:

Hmmm… do you think I like halos? haha… I ended up not choosing one because Mark wasn’t a big fan and I wanted him to like the ring just as much as I did. Next week I’ll be posting about my venue!