Why Cubic Zirconia Engagement Rings Are A Good Idea

Now that Valentine’s Day has passed – a sweet and sour day for many people – many of you might find yourself engaged. I hear wedding bells…

Approximately 2.5 million weddings per year take place in the USA alone. What does that mean in dollars? Well, let’s simplify… The average wedding costs between $20,000 - $30,000. That’s not including the engagement ring and the honeymoon that follows. If your fiancé isn’t bald now, he might be after your vows.

Jewelry – often associated with deep wallet reaching – can actually help your wallet, in such a case as the Wedding Day. How, you might ask. Well, let me explain to you the benefits of cubic zirconia jewelry… (Don’t turn away just because I didn’t type “diamond” in there.) Can anyone really afford to ignore cubic zirconia in our current economical day and age? No Rockefeller, I was referring to the average, 7-11 person.

You’d love to know that at first glance, most experts can’t tell the difference between cubic zirconia and diamond stones. Now that you know appearances can be deceiving, your little heart has probably already stopped fluttering. In a comparison chart between cubic zirconia and diamonds, cubic zirconia is very competitive. In fact, here are the stats:

Properties	Cubic Zirconia
Definition:	synthesized mineral to simulate diamonds in appearance
Crystal:	isometric
Crystal Habit:	dipyramidal prismatic
Hardness:	8.05 (harder than most natural gemstones)
Density:	between 5.5 – 5.9
Luster:	adamantine
Flaws:	flawless
Color:	can be made utterly colorless
Dispersion:	0.06
Specific Gravity:	between 5.6 - 6
Cut:	facet shape is often different from that of diamond

Properties	Diamond
Definition:	natural
Crystal:	isometric
Crystal Habit:	octahedral
Hardness:	hardest
Density:	between 3.5 – 3.53
Luster:	adamantine
Flaws:	flawed
Color:	yellow/brownish tinge; colorless is extremely rare
Dispersion:	0.044
Specific Gravity:	3.52
Cut:	can be of various cuts

For us simpletons, I’ll explain to you what the difficult ones mean:

• Isometric: To consist of three equal axes, that lie at right angles to one another (Yes - my brain’s freezing, too)
• Crystal Habit: A description of the mineral’s external shape. A more detailed description can be found here: http://www.answers.com/topic/crystal-habit and a better understanding of the shapes’ different meanings can be found here: http://webmineral.com/crystall.shtml
• Luster: It looks like it sounds; it’s basically the type of “shine” or how the stone reflects light. It contains two categories: metallic and non-metallic. Both diamond and cubic zirconia fall under the latter.
• Dispersion: The color that results when white light disperses into different colors of the spectrum. Higher fractal values naturally equal greater dispersion.
• Specific Gravity: Let wiki do the talking here; it’s so much easier for me.