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Look up moissanite. It’s literally the cheaper, superior diamond. The fact that it exists just goes to show how inflated the diamond market is
Saw a story about a wedding ring where instead of a diamond the ring was jeweled with the couple's birth stones fit together into the shape of a heart, which honestly I think is WAY better and probably WAY cheaper too.
What are birth stones?
Birthstones are like the zodiac signs of geology. Each month gets assigned a gemstone.
There's some religious history to them, but in general these days people are talking about the list of stones that American jewelers came up with in the early 20th century to try to sell more shit.
As long as one the birth months isn't April.
Moissanite is chemically different to diamond (SiC vs C), has a different crystal structure, and is less hard. You can also get actual lab-grown diamond, but they are quite expensive. But you probabaly won't be able to tell the difference anyway.
Usually you can tell the difference. Lab grown diamond is pure while rock grown diamond is imperfect.
But you have to look at it under a magnifying glass to tell, and know what you’re looking for.
But also, who cares that it's less hard? I'm not using it for a drill bit, it's a cosmetic piece. Literally it's only function is visual. And moissanite is superior. All the visual markers that are used for beauty in a diamond it surpasses. And some quick googling I did to confirm that also showed me that diamond is only barely harder ("With a hardness of 9.25, moissanite is the second-hardest material used a gemstone." a diamond is a 10.) and it turns out, less likely to break in some cases. "Moissanite doesn't have a cleavage plane, while diamond does. (This is an internal plane along which a diamond crystal can easily split)" So if you hit a diamond in the wrong spot, it can still crack. Moissanite does not have a weak spot.
It’s like 93% as hard but has better better optical properties which is what matters.
A strategy that has been working well for me is "Never buy jewelry of any kind ever because it's completely pointless."
Don't hang around people who demand you consume in order to get their approval. They are empty people who will not support you.
Everything can be pointless when it comes down to it. I never ever wore jewelry but when I got married we got really nice matching plain bands and now I never take it off and quite like how it looks, it's not pointless to me.
There will be no rings for me. I run too many power tools for that.