help me find a ring! please

ok so engagement is official, and now i'm trying to find a ring and i could use some help/advice/second opinions.

want:
-titanium preferably, or tungsten
-tension setting
-3-5mm widthhttp://www.titaniumrings.com/etoileA.html
-originally wanted a peridot but have just found out today they are very soft, so prob not ideal for tension setting.
-$$$ is tight as we'll be spending all our funds on immigration so ideally i don't want to spend more than $200 or thereabouts.

there is this:
http://www.titanium-jewelry.com/tirititesetd.html
altho my ideal ring would be more like this:
http://www.titaniumrings.com/etoileA.html

forgot: so if a peridot isn't possible, than probably a cheap, small diamond or maybe white topaz

Congrats, J!

i wish you all the happiness! that 2nd ring is gorgeous.

Congrats! A coworker of mine has a tension setting and I always stare at it in meetings because it looks so cool.

yeah i love the way a tension setting looks, but it's gotta be a fairly hard stone to withstand it: obv, i'll be wearing this ring every day for the rest of my life, and i'm pretty clumsy, so no soft stones. really, really wanted a peridot or similar :(

i like this, but with the point diamonds on either side, and probably with a higher polish:

http://www.titaniumonline.com/images/products/TJ-DGR/240X360/F54-2101PE-D.jpg

i meant without the diamonds

both my mum and my MIL want to give me old engagement rings:

my mum's is gold (yuck) with a smallish diamond solitaire and sort of pretty little diamond things on the band, but i think it has bad vibes (it's from her first marriage to a psycho who wasn't my dad).

MIL's ring is a platinum band, family heirloom, with an empty three-stone setting.

yeah ramzi, my ideal ring is probably that second one too, but it's a ridiculous price ;_;

these are all neat! i like the 2nd one in your first post.

can you have it made for less by someone else?

i need to look into finding a custom jeweler round here.

who knows a lot about diamonds? is 0.50 carat okay? i know nothing about them as i've never really liked them all that much.

If you're not into diamonds I'd just skip it and get a stone you do like. There are prettier things and throwing a diamond on the thing just because it's an engagement ring is silly, imo.

Also hey congrats.

well yeah but i want a ring that will last and peridots don't seem to be the way to go. i don't hate diamonds, but i just really had my heart set on a green gem.

i could stick with the peridot, but then i'd have to get a claw setting which isn't very common with titanium, or and inset stone, which i don't like.

i don't know shit about diamonds because i never really cared. my sister has a really nice sapphire surrounded by smaller diamonds and it makes it a very pretty and unique ring.

gah maybe i should think about accepting MIL's platinum ring and having stones set in it?

Sapphires are v. hard (second to diamonds, iirc) and come in lots of colors, not just blue--maybe they come in greens, too? Aren't there some greenish topazs? There must be some other green gemstones that would do the trick.

HI DERE I FIND ONE FOR U

http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=3096698

omg that is such a pretty stone!! thanking u, quincie!! <3

Congratulations. I love the idea of a titanium ring, never even known if such a thing was possible. I will ask my jewelery making sister about it it must be quite hard to work. I want to be able to see the pictures and see if a tension setting is what I think it is then that is most awesome.

(Titanium rings remind me of the 1st world war tradition of using the aluminium shell detonator safety rings as engagement and wedding ring alumium being pretty rare then)

titanium rings are so freakin awesome: they're drilled out of a single piece, since you can't really mold them (also makes resizing really difficult). but they're super super lightweight, which i love, an so strong! i got the idea from that movie 'the abyss' many years, and decided then that i would have a titanium wedding ring.

OK now I have pictures and can see the tension settings, there is a place down hatton garden (London jewelery district in my neighbourhood) that specialises in them. I like the look it leaves the stone very open to the light.

aha, here we go

http://www.econe.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=1_4&products_id=102

Although I like the green + diamonds above, My granmother's engagment ring which my sister now has is an emerald surrounded by small diamonds.

Hey Justine! Congrats!!

My original engagement ring was exactly like the second setting you posted but it was channel set not tension set. I had to have it reset because it wasn't secure enough. :-( So, just make sure any of the rings you look at are really tension set and not channel set.

I would definitely look into having something custom made - it's not always as expensive as it sounds like it would be.

Could you use the setting from your MIL with the diamond from your mum and two small green stones that you add? That might look pretty!

Also Quincie is right about sapphires coming in lots of colors. Mine is a pink one and they do def come in green!!

http://www.simplysapphires.com/images/imagesothers2006/chrysc222-1.jpg

my mother-in-law found this stone for me: it's a green sapphire from ceylon, non heat treated, 8.6 x 6.4 x 4.8mm, 2.22 Ct. $189

does anyone here know much about gemstones?

fuck: http://www.simplysapphires.com/images/imagesothers2006/chrysc222-1.jpg

also: i have realised that a $200 budget was incredibly naive.

That's beautiful. 2 ct. is pretty big so if I were you I'd go check out some similarly sized stones in person to be sure it's something you'd be comfortable wearing before buying anything online.

yeah i was wondering about that: i have fairly small hands so i don't want it to look ridiculous.

http://www.simplysapphires.com/images/imagesgreen2005/greenem84-1.jpg

6x4.3mm

0.84 Ct.

$87

too small, you think?

It's so tough - I really think you need to see some comparable ones in person. I have three stones in mine and they're each .5 ct but I'm not a big stone person etc. I think .84 would be completely fine but it really just depends on your taste and also the setting.