And Now I'm Completely Broke

So there I was at the dinner table, my excitement had just been crushed via text message. I had to make big moves towards an engagement ring or the resulting fallout would be worse than a Michael Bay movie if my old roommate got engaged.

Disclaimer: I absolutely love my girlfriend she means the world to me, the idea of engagement was absolutely fine with me, and if I had the money it would have been done years ago, but I wanted to wait on a proper ring that she deserved, not just any old thing.

The very next day I went to Jared, it was time to start looking for a ring, I wanted to go shop some prices and see what I could finance at different stores.

So I walked in, it was my first time in a proper jewelry store in my entire life. Not to say I have not bought my girlfriend jewelry before, but it had always been from little boutique stores, never a store of this magnitude. As soon as I told the lady that I was looking at engagement rings I was ushered to a back room where they went over the basics of engagement rings and diamonds.

This was a factory of salesmen.

Like this, with diamonds

I told them my ideal price range and they showed me through my options as far as diamond size and clarity goes. Every diamond in Jared is virtually perfect to the naked eye, and since I didn't expect the gawking public to bust out a magnifying glass when it was shown, size was really the only concern in the store. I was shown a diamond, and promised that it was the best deal "ever". So I started looking at settings, originally set on a solitary setting. They changed my mind.

So here I was, about to make a down payment on a house and presented with a ring that costs roughly as much. I knew I only had money for one at the time, but figured what the hell and bought both.

They sold me.

I don't really have any pictures of the ring from this period, so here it is during our engagement shoot. It's on top of a godzilla action figure because... why not?

So I went in with the idea of looking around for a few minutes and leaving, I walked out with the freaking ring. A store full of salesmen and women had just made a sucker of me, I loved the ring but damn did they take me for a run.

So I had to start saving all over again, I had two months before I needed to come up with a down payment and monthly ring payments to boot.

Coming Up Next: "Engagement Time!"