WALMART RINGS.....

My ring was preowned. A widower who had been married over 50 years brought his late wife's ring into FH's antique shop. FH was looking for an engagement ring for me, so he bought it. I maybe would have felt differently if it had been a divorce situation, but I feel it is "lucky" because that couple had been married so long.

I haven't read all 7 pages but I have to say I would be pissed if DH got my ring from walmart. It's like shopping for food and then oh lets get an engagement ring??? No thought, no planning??? come on! I found out the price of my ring and could have flipped but DH chose it for me not because of the price but because of the meaning behind it (infinity band) I could care less if my ring was $300.00 or 10k but there are so many other places than walmart.

I am lucky enough to say I haven't stepped foot in one for over three years now, yes my walmart where I live is a living proof of "people of walmart"

Lots of snobs on here.

I don't like Walmart. I wouldn't care if it was from a store like Walmart though. But FH knows to not go there for reasons I won't go in to. I'm like @kristenann, I would have picked Target or Kohl's.

Whatever FH gave me I would be happy with. That being said, there really does sound like quite a few snobs on here.

I wouldn't be happy with a Walmart ring Mostly because I'd be worried about the quality. I'd rather have a really small quality diamond than a big one that wasn't good

I didn't read all 7 pages, reading a few gets the point across. The first engagement ring I was given (by my ex) was from a jewelry store and was around $2,500-$3,000 I forget. The one year we were engaged he was cheating on me the entire time. I ended up losing the ring and didn't even care. Fast forward to my current engagement. My FH got my ring from Walmart. It's a beautiful ring and it didn't cost $20.

I have friends who purchased their rings for thousands at Zales and have lost diamonds more than once within months of having it. Price means nothing. It's the symbolism that matters. I think people spend way too much time thinking about the size of the stone, the amount of carats and the price when they should be focused on the commitment and the relationship. Money is money, anyone can lose their job and go from rich to poor at the blink of an eye. That's when real life hits you.

I'd take a ring from a quarter machine with a strong, happy, healthy relationship over an expensive ring and a crappy relationship any day.

And i love Walmart although i've never seen anyone dressed crazy when I go LOL.

Lover of quality and paying for things that last forever/long time = snob.

I'll take it.

Damn, I guess I should actually read this thread since it's going on.

If my husband couldn't really afford to get me a ring, I wouldn't want one at all. Why do you need a ring to be married? lol I wouldn't support Walmart's business practices either, but if we were really hard up, I would have asked him to forgo a ring since that's not what makes you engaged or married.

This thread is an eye-opener to me. I had no idea that so many brides cared which store their engagement rings came from. Walmart seems to be a particularly disliked jewelry counter. How about Costco? Would that be offensive as well? Seriously, I'm curious. I found this interesting quote about Costco diamonds and Tiffany diamonds:

“A diamond is a diamond,” says Russell Shor, a senior industry analyst at the Gemological Institute of America, the premier rating and certification agency for diamonds. “If you have a stone from a top jeweler with the same grade as the discount place, they’re basically the same thing.” Good Morning America tested this theory in 2005, when it appraised both a Tiffany diamond and a Costco diamond. As it turned out, the $16,600 Tiffany cut was valued at only $10,500, whereas the $6,600 Costco version was actually priced 17 percent under its appraised value of $8,000."

But a diamond's quality is based on clarity, color, & cut. It's not like a WalMart diamond will fall apart, haha.

99% of people don't know a single difference between VVS & VS, and could never ever spot it.

ETA: Centerpiece said it. It doesn't matter where you get it, unless they're selling you a fake diamond (which is fraud, if masquerading as real), it's still a diamond.

I wouldn't care at all. I don't even have an engagement ring. I had the option of engagement ring or house, so I went with a house. I get a wedding ring so who cares if I have an engagement ring at all. It's the love and marriage that matter not the ring and the wedding day itself.

I guess I'll be the bad person but I just went to the walmart site and looked at their rings you can get better quality from a nicer store than that for the same price... I'm sorry I just hate walmart!

http://www.walmart.com/cp/540912

Diamond is a diamond, but what about the actual ring? The setting? Prongs? Cleaning? Service if it's broken? That's the issue, I think.

@Centerpiece Costco would be just fine. Something about walmart to me just ugh...

I know not everyone read all of the pages, but if you go to page 3, you will see that it's not really the stone I'm talking about...but the quality and construction of the ring. And, more importantly, the customer service you get at your typical Walmart. The Walmarts where I live aren't really bad, honestly...but that's because they have to keep up with Target around here, and Targets FAR outnumber the Walmarts in my area.

FH and I looked at Walmart rings online, kind of as a joke, but they have a huge range of rings for everyone's budget. The most expensive one we saw was $10,000. Personally I would be mad about a Walmart ring, not because of the "low budget" (so-called), but because Walmart as a business sucks.

The only store I said FH couldn't get my ring from was Jared's. I hate that commercial. I did not want to say, "He went to Jared's!" But that's a weird "me" thing, not a ring thing.

There's also the fact that in almost all aspects of my life, I prefer to support local and independent businesses over chain stores. I try to avoid chains as much as possible, though there are unfortunately certain things where it's difficult to do. But that's why I didn't go to DB for my wedding dress, and why I wouldn't want a ring from ANY chain store, including Walmart. I mean, if my FH had proposed with something from Jared or the like, I wouldn't have said no. But given the option, I'd prefer something else.

@future my ring also can't from Zales. I was first looking at Sam's club but then decided I wanted something with a nice warranty so if a stone came out, needs to be cleaned or resized I can go there. I am not into large rings or even expensive ones. I love my e ring and with my wedding bands we will be paying a little over$1k plus the cost of the warranty For three rings. Fh could spend more but I did not want him to.

@mallory I did the same thing last night lol. Then I realized that it's kind of silly to compare because I don't really know the experience of this particular couple. In my case, I spent months going with my FH ring shopping and agonizing over different rings. In the end, we went to a store with a good warranty and the ability to upgrade the center stone if we so choose.

I think that in this particular case that the bride to be needs to take a second to breathe and then try communicating with her FH. We can all have opinions on Walmart and judge whether or not it's an acceptable ring store, but in the end what matters is how this bride-to-be and her FH handle the conflict. If she sits him down and has an honest heart-to-heart about her issues with the ring and he has his chance to state his intentions with it (ie; maybe this was the best he could afford for right now but he wants to upgrade when he can, etc.), then I think it can be easily resolved. Conflict will always arise between partners, what's important is how it's handled.

Your friend probably had a temporary breakdown about the ring because every bride has a story about the ring and how her FH presented it, and where he purchased it. Not every bride gets that he went to Jared's story. Maybe in a few days she will be okay and realize that he loves her and purchased what he could afford. I agree with Allie maybe the plan is to upgrade later. In the meantime, since she loved the ring in the beginning encourage her to recapture those feelings and keep her little Wal-Mart story between the two of you. It is no one's business where he got the ring and how much it cost. Personally, I would not want my ring to come from Wal-Mart but I have purchased some jewelry from Wal-Mart before and it was fine.