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What Does She Want?
If you and your girlfriend have been planning this engagement (in other words, it's not going to come as a complete surprise), she probably has some idea of the type of ring she'd like to have. Many couples go shopping for the ring together nowadays, so don't feel like you're ruining anything by asking her if she'd like to browse in some shops with you. She doesn't have to be there when you make the final purchase (hence recapturing the element of surprise), but you can at least get a pretty good idea of what she's interested in -- and you'll be relieved if it's wildly different from what you were planning on buying for her.
The shape of the stone is often very important to women. Some women have very strong opinions about what type of cut they prefer, so if your fiancee is looking at a princess-cut diamond, but you really like the pear-shaped one ... give in to her on this. Yes, the ring is a gift from you, but she'll be wearing it every day for the rest of her life. She has to feel comfortable with it. (If she thinks that the pear-shaped diamond makes her fingers look fat or misshapen, for example, she's going to think about how great the princess cut would have looked -- every day.)