If your girlfriend refuses a proposal due to lack of diamonds, you have chosen badly. However, its pretty reasonable for her to refuse if she's dissappointed, s

If your girlfriend refuses a proposal due to lack of diamonds, you have chosen badly. However, its pretty reasonable for her to refuse if she's dissappointed, so you need to discuss in advance that her ring won't be a diamond. This could be awkward, or worse, it could ruin the surprise. I got pretty lucky in that I read the article before I met her, and told her about how bad diamonds were early on. That meant we had the discussion years before I proposed. She had diamonds stamped in her heart too, but we compromized, and I went to huge effort to get her an amazing ring. If the ring is amazing, she'll be OK, and so will her friends. (My wife points out that she has friends who would have said no, on the basis that if the suitor wouldn't do what she wanted for a proposal, he wasn't the right guy for her. This may sound douchy, but the proposal is hugely important to (some, maybe most) women. So maybe I just got lucky.)