There's a bit of a clever trick you can do with an Amazon search, where you can just look for heavily reduced jewellery.

Give it a go - this link is set up to search for jewellery reduced between 80% and 99% on Amazon.

​So, is that a route worth considering if you are looking for a cheap engagement ring, or are the original prices massively inflated?

The first thing to do is to narrow down from the 45,000 results which came up when I searched. 

I filtered so it was just showing women's jewellery, and then rings, and then engagement rings. It was still at 1000 results, so I filtered again to those with a diamond gemstone and came up with 98 results.

That's a much more manageable number if we are trying to see if we are getting good value.

I then filtered again to remove anything below £25, as they were clearly synthetic diamonds. 

So what was left?

Some of the listings were clearly wrong. I found a 0.16 carat diamond ring for £416, which is an OK price, but the original retail price was listed as £1.49 million, which I would suggest is a little steep - or more likely a mistake. There were loads of listings like this. 

However, amongst all those slightly absurd prices there were about a dozen rings which were good value. They probably weren't worth the original retail price but they were certainly worth considering.

There was a half carat diamond ring in an 18 carat setting sold by the Natural Diamond Store Outlet, reduced from £3000 to £600. It was a fairly low grade, but you could easily pay that for a 0.25 carat ring.

The other deal which stood out was a 2.38 carat diamond ring for £2700 by Diamond Jewelry United via Amazon. The original price was listed as £14650. Grading was actually pretty decent with an E-F colour and an SI2 clarity. That price would be it high up in our 2 carat price comparison (top 5 certainly and that's comparing it to smaller carat diamonds).

So, it's certainly worth a look if you don't mind doing a bit of filtering and sorting.

Good luck, I hope she says yes...

We're spreading our wings a little bit on The Cheap Engagement Rings Guide to look at other money saving ideas for weddings. 

Wedding dresses compete with diamond rings in terms of baffling choices for the potential bride, with thousands of options and prices ranging from £50 or less, up to several thousand pounds if it's appeared with a designer label on it.

If you're currently sitting in the car and crying into smartphone after seeing the prices in a local wedding dress boutique...fear not, there are cheaper alternatives. 

Firstly, there's the option of either importing a wedding dress from abroad, or buying a much cheaper dress online. It won't surprise you to realise that eBay and Amazon are good starting points, but you do need to be willing to sift through thousands of options and do a bit of research.

My preference is Amazon, as you can filter by user ratings out of 5. Sure, you will probably sift out some good quality dresses, but that's not a big problem when you are starting with 250,000 results for the phrase 'wedding dress' (yes, that a quarter of a million). 

You may end up needing to get some tailoring or adjusting done, but if you've paid £100 for the dress rather than £1000 then you will hopefully have some budget to spare.

The next option is to buy second hand. Again, it's a question of being willing to sift through thousands of dresses to find the best ones. Sold prices on eBay range from £50 to £2000, whilst prices in Oxfam's bridal section ranged from £50 to £850 when I searched.

Finally, there's the option of hiring a dress. You might assume this is a cheaper option that buying second hand, but it generally isn't as the companies do a lot of the legwork for you (cleaning, couriers etc). They also seem to focus on the higher priced dresses, presumably because no-one is going to hire a £100 dress. Expect to pay at least £500 to hire a wedding dress from To Have and To Hire or Be Bride.

Good luck!

If you've not sorted an engagement ring, check out our guide to retailers...

The run up to Christmas is peak time for engagement ring sales. It might be the mistletoe, or the mulled wine or it might just be that people like to pop the question over new year and then have a wedding to plan in January.

Anyway, if you're considering a proposal at the moment, here are 5 quirky engagement rings you can find on Etsy, which has a good choice of handmade, vintage and unusual rings.

You are perfectly entitled to ignore 'traditions' about spending a month's salary on an engagement ring, since they were created by diamond manufacturers. In reality, many of us don't have £1000 or £2000 spare once we have paid for everything else for Christmas. 

For £200 you won't get a brand new high grade diamond, but you might consider something like this vintage 18 carat gold engagement ring with a 0.15 carat diamond for £190.

Alternatively, go for an alternative gemstone such as this gorgeous emerald and diamond ring for £186.

Studies of how much the average UK proposer spends on an engagement ring seem to vary wildly. Some put the average at around £600, others say it is more like £1500.

If you are working to a budget of around £1000, you've got a pretty huge market to choose from. 

Personally I like a traditional solitaire diamond with white gold, but do some discreet digging through your potential spouse's jewellery box to work out which styles and colours they go for.

How about this 0.45 carat diamond in a platinum setting for less than £900?

If 2016 has been kind to you, or you've got a savings pot to dig into then you can pick up something pretty special for an engagement ring. 

​How about this vintage Tiffany & Co engagement ring for just over £10,000? 

​It's got a 1.21 carat diamond and comes with the Tiffany certificate and presentation box. 

Prepare for the sound of a jaw dropping if you propose with this ring...

There's nothing to say you have to buy a diamond ring at all when you pop the question. It's not easy, but try to suss out your potential spouse's view on diamonds. You might find they actually want something a bit more reflective of their own tastes and personality, such as an alternative gemstone like a ruby, a sapphire or an emerald.

Or how about an uncut diamond, showing off the value of a diamond but a bit of quirky individual style? This 1.40 carat uncut diamond is £700.

You can find more shopping ideas in Etsy's Editor's Picks. We participate in Etsy's affiliate scheme.

So you've blown your entire savings on an engagement ring. The answer was yes, and after initial excitement you're now saving up for the wedding, trying to show an interest in different shades of pink paper for the invitations (secretly hoping that the cheapest one gets chosen because they all look pretty similar). 

Suddenly you realise that you've got to get a ring for yourself as well. 

The good news is that a men's wedding ring generally doesn't cost nearly as much as a diamond engagement ring. Sure, you can spend £1000 on a men's wedding ring if you really want to, but for that price you'd be looking at a huge platinum wedding ring which Mr T would say was a bit showy.

So what you are your options?

If you want to spend a bit of money, your wedding ring options are 9 carat gold, 18 carat gold, platinum and palladium. Platinum and palladium are popular because they stand the test of time very well. If money was no object I'd probably choose one of those two, but in terms of appearance they don't look all that different to the cheaper options.

Expect to pay somewhere between £200 and £1000 for platinum wedding rings (depending on the thickness and your finger size) and about £100 - £500 for palladium.

9 carat gold and 18 carat gold are popular choices. The main downside of gold is that it is softer than some metals, so if you are one of these proper men that has a job which uses their hands then you mend end up damaging or breaking it. My main risk is papercuts and screen fatigue, so it's not an issue for me. 

9 carat gold is cheaper obviously, since it contains less gold (the rest is cheap metals to pad it out). You'll pay £50 - £300 for 9 carat wedding rings and about twice that for 18 carat rings. Again, the price depends on the thickness of the band. I'd avoid 2mm or 3mm as it looks a bit too dainty for most men.

And what about the cheap end? I personally think it's perfectly acceptable to spend next to nothing on a wedding ring. You can get a ring made from materials which last and who are you really trying to impress? 

Cheap options include cobalt, silver, titanium and tungsten.

For those cheaper materials, prices range from £5 up to £100. Cobalt is light and tough, silver scratches and bends easily, titanium is hard and difficult to resize whilst tungsten is very resistant to scratching and is more environmentally friendly than most.

What would I choose? If money's no object I'd choose platinum. For something precious but not too expensive I'd choose 9 carat gold. For a tight budget, I'd choose tungsten. Complaints to the usual address...

If you're looking for places to buy cheap wedding rings, you might like to start with our guide.

There was a newspaper story a few years ago asking if marriage had become something for the middle classes.

One article quoted academics in Virginia as saying "Marriage is becoming a distinctive social institution marking middle-class status."

Honestly, I'm not sure if I agree with that and it's worth noting that there was another article a couple of years later saying that middle classes were 'turning away from marriage'.

Whatever, the truth of those studies, I do think it's true that the cost of getting engaged stops some people from proposing. Raising £1000 just isn't achievable for some people - I know I'd have struggled to find that amount of money when I was in my early 20s when I was earning a pittance and living away from home for the first time.

So, what if you can only afford an engagement ring costing £100? What can you actually get for your money.

The bad news is that you won't be able to afford a high quality, decent sized, brand new diamond ring. Although, I suspect that is stating the obvious somewhat.

However, a budget of £100 does give (at least) four options:

Diamond rings plummet in price once they've been worn by someone else, even if it was only for a few days before things all went wrong...

The depreciation is worse than a sports car, as a percentage of its original cost. 

For example, I've found several diamond rings with a high street value of about £500 which have gone for £100 on eBay.

​If you're patient, you might even find one from a big name jeweller (Ernest Jones, H Samuel etc) which hasn't even been worn.

Etsy is also worth a look for preloved rings.

If you don't fancy a second hand ring, you could just about get an authentic diamond ring for £100.

In reality, the diamond would be tiny. 

We found a diamond ring with a 0.10 carat for £95 on Amazon. Generally I advise people to look for a diamond of at least 0.25 carat, but if your potential spouse likes dainty jewellery then it's an option.

I'd avoid this option if your girlfriend has massive hands...

There are several alternatives to diamonds, which look similar to the real thing (unless you are a master jeweller) but which cost a fraction of the price. 

Diamond Style or Tru Diamonds are good places to start. Tru Diamonds reckon that their £100 simulated diamonds would cost £8500 if they were the real thing.

It's up to you whether you tell your girlfriend that it's not real...

What a shocker eh? 

Lots of people don't choose diamond rings at all. Historically they never did, until a diamond company carried out one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history.

You can get Blue sapphire, Green emerald or Red ruby rings for well under £100.

Good luck, I hope she says yes...