Years ago the natural diamond in my wife's wedding ring fell out somewhere, so she stopped wearing the ring. When our 25th anniversary was coming up I asked her

Years ago the natural diamond in my wife's wedding ring fell out somewhere, so she stopped wearing the ring. When our 25th anniversary was coming up I asked her if she wanted to get a new ring. Our 20-something year old daughters got wind of this and said under no circumstances could we get a natural diamond. I'd never paid much attention to the issue since I hadn't been in the market for a diamond in the 26 since years since I purchased one for the first ring (a ring that only cost $600 since I was a poor college student, no wonder the diamond eventually fell out). I did some looking around and learned about Moissanite. The women on r/moissanite were especially enthused about it. From there I learned that you could design and purchase Moissanite jewelry directly from China. I had my wife look through the rings of one of the stores on Alibaba and choose one that she liked, except the color was wrong (she wanted rose gold instead of platinum). So I reached out to the company and asked about the possibility of getting it made in rose gold. I was assured it was no problem. I told them I wanted solid rose gold and not plated. They said the price would be higher, but no problem. I sent my wife's ring size and a few days later they sent back CAD mockups of what the ring would look like with measurements. I had them enlarge the bottom of the band and we came to an agreement on what cut/color/clarity/etc. all of the side moissanite stones would be. Then we started working on the main stone. We came to an agreement on size (2 Carat), color, clarity, style, etc. We could specify everything about the stone from the height of the crown to the width of the edge to the way the stone was cut to the bottom point - frankly we had to read up a lot of how stones are cut and what the different options are to know how to appropriately respond. About a week later they had finished cutting the stone and sent us videos of it under different light conditions so that we could approve it. Then they manufactured the ring and sent us videos of it to approve. After approval and final payment we received it in the mail about 3 days later. Frankly my wife loves the ring. It really is gorgeous and everyone thinks the Moissanite is a real diamond. My favorite part is that the entire thing only cost me $700. 10 out of 10 I'd definitely do it that way again.