Welcome to The Ring Adviser's Celebrity Engagement Ring Breakdown. In each post, we simulate a popular celebrity engagement ring choice and determine what the best Diamond would be. Contact Us if you would like to send us a suggestion for a future installment of our personal one-on-one help.

WHAT WOULD IT COST TO REPLICATE TAY DOME’S RING FROM TAYLOR LAUTNER?

In recent tween vampire movie celebrity engagement news, former "Twilight" star and Team Jacob patriarch, Taylor Lautner announced his engagement to girlfriend Tay Dome. If, like me, you’re having a hard time remembering what Taylor’s been up to since “Breaking Dawn: Part 2,” apparently, he’s found romance and love. Good for them! Nothing wrong with that. Plus, he made $45 million from those movies and is currently worth $40 million, so it’s nice to see him find personal happiness as well. But enough about the couple, we're interested in the ring, so let's get to it!

Breaking down the Tay Dome Ring

The engagement ring comes from the online shop Ring Concierge, which markets itself as bringing “Fine Jewelry for Women by Women.” The ring appears to be a 5-Carat Oval-shaped Diamond in a traditional solitaire setting. Assuming a Very Good Cut with an above-average Color and a Clarity in the VVS1-2 range, most experts are pricing it out in the $150,000 range. Let’s break this down to see what it would cost to duplicate and see if we can do better.

At Blue Nile, we found a handful of GIA Certified Oval Diamonds above our 5-Carat threshold with the requisite high-value specifications. For Oval Diamonds in this range, there is a lot of price sensitivity. This proved true at James Allen as well. You can easily see the price more than double by searching out an IF Clarity. Or, depending on the location of the inclusions, even though we are looking only at VVS2 and above. This is a situation where professional advice is crucial to your choice and your pocketbook. Looking at the available Diamonds, our favorite selection is this 5.01-Carat Oval Cut Diamond for $148,300 with the following specifications.

• Carat - 5.01

• Color - D

• Clarity - VVS2

• Cut - Very Good

• Polish - Excellent

• Symmetry - Excellent

• Fluorescence - Strong Blue

• L/W (mm) - 12.97 x 9.61

• L/W Ratio - 1.35

With the Diamond settled, all you need to finish the look would be a classic solitaire Platinum setting, which wouldn't run you more than a couple of thousand dollars. Thus, all in you should have a duplicate to Tay Dome's engagement ring for right around $150,000, which is the predicted range most experts agreed on.

Next, some savings are available by being a bit choosier with the Diamond. Let's see how close we can get the same style ring with a similar presence while sticking to a "semi-reasonable" budget?

Budget Tay Dome ENGAGEMENT RING

To push the savings as much as possible with this ring, we will utilize James Allen. As a rule, we try and strictly adhere to GIA-certified Diamonds. Lately, though, James Allen had begun to use IGI certifications for some of their inventory. While we were skeptical at first, a few independent studies have shown that their recent certifications are on par with GIA, and as a benefit, they are significantly cheaper. With that in mind, we chose an Oval Diamond with slightly less high-value metrics and ended up with this 5.03 Carat Oval Diamond from James Allen for $98,510.

The specifics for this stone are Color H, Clarity VVS1, with Good Polish, and Symmetry. Our main argument for this stone is that, at almost $50,000 less, can it look as good from an “eye-clean” perspective?

The Diamond looks spectacular. At first glance, you can see that the Color is only of a slightly lesser grade, while the Clarity is better. The sticking point is in Polish and Symmetry. This is a tricky proposition as even though we can utilize the 10X magnification to dig into any Inclusions or Girdle Thickness and Cutlet, we can’t judge the radiance of the Diamond on a screen. Personally, this is a situation where we would recommend getting the Diamond and taking full advantage of the return window to get it looked over first-hand. Given the non-trivial cost of the Diamond, we would still recommend it, just with that caveat. Because at the end of the day, $50,000 is a significant saving.

Would you like us to help you create your version of the Tay Dome engagement ring to fit your budget? Contact us, and we will provide you with a one-on-one service that will get you the best diamond available!