Time to propose me thinks! Back in June 2010 I had one of those light bulb moments, ting! My tiny little pea- sized brain twigged that I would be away on our annual snowboarding trip over Valentine ’s Day. What better place to propose than on top of a mountain, doing the activity that we both enjoy doing most…..snowboarding of course.

A few weeks later, at a drunken birthday party, I explained my genius plan to one of my close friends. He has been badgering for years for one of our group of friends to get married as he wants to be an integral part of a wedding, but he doesn’t want to get married, he just wants to be close enough to the bride and groom that he can heckle during the speeches. His words of wisdom were….”don’t do it on Valentine’s Day, it’s cheesy and she might expect it, do it the day before or the day after.” Bingo, the proposal date was set, 15th February 2011.

He swore to secrecy and we agreed we would say no more.

Let the countdown begin…T minus 8 months. T-minus 7 months…..completely forgot about the drunken conversation about the proposal.

T-minus 6 months…still no recollection of the night I devised my master plan.

T-minus 5 months….its my birthday month, so it’s all about me in September. No time to try and remember about buying the most important gift I’m ever going to give.

T-minus 4 months….Had another conversation with my engagement plan partner in crime and he was dropping hints as to my progress, DOH! the penny dropped with the sound of several hundred thousand pennies that were about to leave my bank account.

T-minus 3 months…time to research, for those people who know me, when I’m going to make any kind of significant purchase, I research and research and research, and when I’m done I research a bit more.

Researching the ring

Firstly I imagine whatever I write in the next paragraph, 95% of people will not do the research that I did. Did I spend to long researching? Probably yes, do I regret it? not for a second.

Firstly I thought a diamond was a diamond, you got big ones, small ones, round ones, square ones. Yes the above statement is true, your do get them in different sizes and shapes, what I didn’t realise was there was also colour, cut, clarity, polish, different certificates depending on which gemmology laboratory has assessed the diamond and the fact that some are not comparable to others (i.e. EGL rate diamonds higher than GIA – you can find all about that when you do your research but look at http://www.truthaboutdiamonds.com ).

T-minus 2 months….Now I had my newfound knowledge of diamonds off I went on my quest to find a tiny lump of compressed carbon. The first place I went to was one of the middle of the road jewellers on the high street, not mentioning any names, but I imagine the owner is a Mr Jones. They had a range claiming superior diamond quality and I quote, “captivating, breathtaking and desired by women everywhere”.

When requesting the see the certificates for these diamonds I found that when independently assessed by the gemmology laboratory the diamonds were in fact distinctly average. Just because there is a jazzy poster claiming superior quality does not mean you will be buying the highest quality diamond to ever to surface out of a diamond mine.

High street vs internet? In the end I opted to buy direct from the internet, I chose a company that let you select the design of the ring, then the metal, then finally the choice of diamond to be set in it, with over 200,000 to choose from! Now, I hear you say, how on earth do you choose between 200,000 diamonds? To which I reply, currently on Autotrader there are 407,575 cars for sale. With a car, you know what you are looking for, you can easily narrow down your search by make and model, engine size and mileage. Choosing the diamond was no different, I knew I wanted – a princess cut, at least ¾ of a carat, GIA certified etc etc. Plug this in the website and bobs your mothers brother, up comes the diamonds that fit my criteria. If you have done your research and understand the different qualities of diamonds it really is as simple as searching on Autotrader.

The site used offered a 30 day money back so I asked for them to deliver one week prior to the holiday, this gave me time to return it after the holiday if she didn’t like it or even worse said no…she was never going to say no though J not with this bad boy I had just bought.

They also offered a service of engraving, but in this instance they could engrave in your own hand writing, so I had the resort and date engraved on the ring. It cost £2 per character, not cheap, but trust me it’s worth it. I have had heaps of brownie points from all the ladies, and plenty of glares from then blokes for raising the engagement ring bar just that little bit higher.

So the ring was bought, now I just had to wait for it to arrive. Did I mention I bought it 2 days before the VAT increase? Can you tell I’m an accountant?

T-minus 1 week….The ring arrived and, in my head, all I had to do was hide the ring box until the holiday….no problem. This was scuppered when the ring arrived in the normal sized ring box, but unfortunately it was sat on a large black pillow, which in turn was in a box roughly the size of a shoe box, much harder to hide in our two bed semi!

T-minus 1 day….so we’re both in the resort and the ring has been smuggled all the way to France without being spotted by the future Mrs H. I can see the finish line. My next challenge is the weather! My perfect plan (which so far had been executed perfectly) was in jeopardy of being ruined due to the large amount of low level cloud bringing visibility down to all of 20 metres, not quite the beautiful mountain views I had hoped for. So I did all I could do in that situation….pray for better weather tomorrow.

T-minus 0 days….BINGO! Halleluiah….the sun is shining nothing can go wrong. Not wanting to get into the soppy details, but all went well, she said yes, had a couple of cigarettes to calm herself down and then we boarded back down the mountain. It was perfect.

My underlying advise would be, do not be afraid to buy from the internet, I literally got twice the ring with my budget from going on the net, but only buy from a reputable website (not to mention any names but have a look on Google for 77), excellent service and a genuinely high quality product. Our ring is…sorry her ring, is valued at 50% more than what I paid for it. She has had nothing but praise from everyone, except one person who said it’s so sparkly it looks fake…but she was just jealous I think – no ring on her finger!!!!!!!!!