It’s a common misconception that buying an engagement or wedding ring on a budget means you can’t buy sustainably and ethically. English Wedding members Jacqueline & Edward are here to bust that myth and show you how you how you can buy affordably without compromising on quality or your eco values.

How to Buy an Affordable Engagement Ring

A grandmotherly wedding guest is inspecting a bride's ring at close quarters while other guests peer over her shoulder to see.

Photograph by Piccolino Weddings

Buying an Ethical Engagement or Wedding Ring on a Budget, by Jacqueline & Edward

Here’s our guide on how to get an affordable yet beautiful, ethical, made to order engagement ring…

Use a stand-in gemstone (for example, cubic zirconia or Moissanite) with the option to replace it with a diamond of the same size when you are ready.

Try our Proposal Ring – this is a stand-in ring you can use to propose with and costs just £200. We have three package options to choose from and the great thing about the Proposal Ring is, you can then trade it in and get £200 off either one of our made to order engagement rings or a bespoke engagement ring.

The Proposal Ring still uses ethical metal and you can re-use some of the ring in your final forever ring if you want to, capturing that perfect moment forever.

Consider lab grown diamonds or moissanite as an alternative to natural diamonds – they have a lower price point, are visually almost identical and provide an interesting ethical alternative. For example, moissanite is intrinsically linked to space, the natural form of which was first identified in association with a meteorite impact crater.

When it comes to metals, they aren’t all equal! Yellow Gold is the least expensive option. The carat of the gold also makes a difference to price but all our rings are made from 18ct gold.

Having gemstones in the shoulders of the ring adds expense but these can be added at a later date – maybe as an alternative to an eternity ring to mark your one-year anniversary. Just tell Jacqueline & Edward if this is something you’d like to do and we will make your engagement ring with this in mind.

Uncertified diamonds and salt and pepper diamonds are a more affordable way to incorporate natural diamonds into your ring. Uncertified diamonds are simply diamonds that haven’t been certified by an independent body such as GIA (Gemological Institute of America) or IGI (International Gemological Institute). They are graded by the supplier of the diamond therefore saving the cost of being sent off to be officially graded and the associated uplift in price. We also double check this grading ourselves.

Salt and pepper diamonds are all unique in relation to their internal colours and patterns, making them an intriguing alternative.

If you don’t want diamonds in your engagement ring but prefer rubies or emeralds, consider lab grown rubies or emeralds instead. They tend to be more vivid, and typically have higher clarity than natural rubies. For more affordable coloured gemstones, lab grown is the way to go and from an ethical perspective, they are conflict free, having not been mined.

If you’re a sentimentalist, you can use family gold, for example, heirloom jewellery, to either create your engagement ring, or just to offset the cost and recycle (we will recycle the gold). This keeps your metal costs lower and you’ll get to treasure some truly recycled, ethical, and sentimental jewellery.

You can spread the cost of your ring with us either using Klarna (three equal payments) or we can split the cost of your engagement ring into two equal instalments, free of charge, and with no interest applied – just email Jacqueline & Edward to ask!

Buying an ethical engagement ring doesn’t have to cost thousands, take a look at our beautiful range of classic, elegant rings for less than £1,000:

The Almond: Recycled 18ct Yellow Gold Engagement Ring with Moissanite Stone – £881

The Bohaun: Recycled 18ct Yellow Gold Engagement Ring with Moissanite Stone – £478

The Keltie: 18ct Yellow Gold Engagement Ring with Moissanite Stone – £835

The Kinglass: 18ct Yellow Gold Ring with Moissanite Stone – £415

Shop the full range of engagement rings here

Choosing Affordable Wedding Rings

So you’re engaged! Now comes the excitement of organising a wedding. To help you find the perfect, ethical wedding ring at an affordable price, consider these helpful tips…

Go traditional! Intricate inlays and skillful Mokume Gane rings are unique and eye-catching, but traditionally designed wedding rings hold an ancient and timeless appeal as well as being less expensive.

A perfect example is The Devon, one of our traditional court rings. If you’d like something more intricate like an inlay adding a later date let us know and we can incorporate your preferences and future-proof your rings.

Try a narrower width for your ring. This could reduce materials and the cost of your ring by up to £200. Widths start at 1.5mm.

You can consider having your wedding bands in 9ct or 14ct gold. 9ct gold has 50% less gold than 18ct gold and can therefore reduce cost. All the rings we make use 18ct gold but you can email us to get a quote for rings of your choice in 9ct or 14ct gold – all our rings are made to order so we are able to offer this unique service. Furthermore, we even create a lot of our gold alloys ourselves in-house.

Choose a ‘classic’ instead of ‘heavy’ depth for your ring design. We already make our standard ‘classic’ depth to the same thickness as some jewellers ‘heavy’ rings – make sure you’re comparing apples with apples. Our classic depth is suitable and durable enough for all lifestyles.

If you want your wedding rings engraving but don’t want the added cost we can do this at any point in the future for you, so there’s no rush.

You can contribute family gold to create your wedding rings too – either to offset costs or to directly recycle and reuse the metal. Jacqueline & Edward will keep your jewellery material costs lower and you’ll get to treasure some truly recycled, ethical, and sentimental wedding rings.

Take a look at some of our ethical wedding rings (handmade made from recycled 18ct gold). All our rings are made to order and you’ll be surprised how affordable and competitively priced they are.

The Newlands: 18ct Yellow Gold Wedding Ring with Matt finish – £420

The Finglen: 18ct White Gold Wedding Ring with Honeycomb finish – £377

The Crossaig: 18ct Yellow Gold Channel Cut Wedding Ring with Etched finish – £400

Shop the full range of wedding rings

Spread the Cost

Look at spreading the cost of your rings to make payment more manageable and affordable. You can spread the cost of your ring with Jacqueline & Edward either using Klarna (three equal payments) or we can split the cost of your engagement ring into two equal instalments, free of charge, and with no interest applied – just email us to ask!

A Unique Touch

All our rings are made with a small piece of river gold melted into the recycled metals. You get to choose the provenance of this gold, whether that be from the Scottish Highlands, Wales, Devon – anywhere has meaning for you. This small piece of gold is gifted to you from us and helps to make your ring truly special and unique.

So there you have it. You can have an ethical, artisan engagement or wedding ring on a budget!

Jacqueline & Edward are members of English Wedding

Web: https://www.jacquelineandedward.com

Advice

Buying an Ethical Engagement or Wedding Ring on a Budget

By Claire Gould, 3 yearsApril 24, 2023 ago

A blue wedding dress and fabulous suit – both Vivienne Westwood and wonderfully alternative for our lovely couple today. We’re loving the glorious summer skies and a trip across the countryside in a vintage blue bus! This is a dream of a wedding in Cumbria, with fabulous images by our friend and English Wedding member Jaye-Peg Photography.

Wedding photographer’s website

https://jayepeg.co.uk/

How did you choose your photographer?

We searched online and chose the photographer because we liked her style.

Were you pleased with your wedding photographer? Do tell… we love a brilliant review!

We were very pleased with Jaye. She provided us with a professional service. She listened to what we wanted, she delivered it and added her own spin. She was very flexible and responsive. Jaye suggested and used a great route back from the registry office to get some fantastic shots.

Tell us about your venue – what made this place special for you?

We choose the Lady Gilfords House for its period features and picturesque setting. We hired a classic car and classic coach, there was space for these to park and have lovely photos too.

Did you love wearing your outfits? How was the dress / suit shopping experience?

We loved wearing our outfits and we thought they work well together. We both enjoyed the Vivienne Westwood shopping experience, they gave us a personal experience when we were choosing our outfits.

Did you hire a florist? Tell us about any floral amazingness

We used Brackens of Bowness in Windermere to create the wedding bouquet and buttonhole. They exceeded our expectations with the flower arrangements.

As cake lovers here at English Wedding we’d LOVE to know who made your cake, and how delicious it was?

Our cake was made by Silly Goose in Whitehaven. The owners, Ewa and Magda, designed and baked us a delicious, gorgeous looking two tier limoncello wedding cake.

Tell us about any special personal touches, or creative projects you made yourselves

We were keen to use sustainable gold for our wedding rings, a search for this brought Jaqueline and Edward jewellers to our attention. As well as designing and making our wedding rings Jaqueline and Edward offer a service to pan for your own gold in Scotland. The gold Magda and I found was incorporated into our wedding rings. It was a fantastic day out, hosted by Mark who gave us all the help we needed to learn gold panning and actually find some.

A personal touch for our guests was that we gave them a unique hand blended bottle of gin. We did this by visiting Whatahoot Distillery in Kings Lyn where they guided us through the process of selecting the ideal botanicals to produce the flavour we wanted. We then distilled, bottled and labelled it all at their distillery, we named our gin Magda and Pauls Wedding Gin. A bottle of this was given to each of the guests along with a mixer, all presented in a Liberty fabric lined pouch, hand made by Magda. Of course we kept a bottle or two for ourselves.

How did the pandemic affect your wedding plans? Do you have any advice to share with couples planning their weddings right now?

We had to changes dates 3 times, we would advise anyone going through this to communicate with all of the various people involved in the wedding.
Some changes were last minute.
Everyone we worked with were very understanding of the date changes and we did get there in the end.