Buying wedding jewellery? Key 5 tips for safe buying and save while buying

Summary: Don't feel cheated, feel satisfied with your wedding jewellery purchase. Here is what you need to keep in mind before you begin your shopping.

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: No Indian wedding is complete without gold jewellery. The main factors to consider while buying wedding jewellery include purity, gram, weight and design. Here is what you need to keep in mind before you begin your shopping for the wedding jewellery:

1) Save money on buying gold jewellery:

Plan ahead for buying gold jewellery for a wedding. It is the best to buy gold exchanges traded funds (ETFs) or gold bonds much in advance to avoid the cost of storing physical gold and any security risks. Computing your requirement of jewellery, set aside a fixed amount every month for ETFs. 

2) Asses the purity of gold jewellery:

Pure gold is too soft to use it as jewellery. So it is alloyed with a mixture of metals like silver, copper, nickel and zinc to give it strength and durability. The most common 'Carat' options are 18K, 22K and 24K. The higher the carat number, the higher the purity of the gold.

3) Hedge the price of gold jewellery:

The price of gold generally moves up around the wedding season. If you plan to buy a physical gold, so shop your wedding jewelley much in advance. The purity of gold and making charges determine the price of the gold jewellery .The higher the skill and labour involved in a design, the higher the making charges.

Prices of gold may also vary as per the colour of gold you may buy. While you may like to have the traditional gold colour for your wedding day jewellery, you could also have white gold, rose gold, two-tone styles,purple, even black for other wedding related events!

4) Identification of good quality gold jewellery:

Identification stamp of the hallmark on gold pieces in India is found on the jewellery that has goes through the process of standardisation.

The government of India has identified Bueaur of Indian Standars' hallmarking in alignment with the international criteria on hallmarking (Vienna Convention 1972).

As per this scheme, licence is granted to the jewellers by BIS under the hallmarking scheme. The BIS certified jewellers can get their jewellery hallmarked from any of the BIS recognized assaying and hallmarking centres.

5) Is the name of gold jewellery brand trustable?

The jeweller's reputation is important to consider when taking the buying decision. Buying gold is based on trust and you are building a lifelong relationship with the jeweller. Ensure that brand is well established and has proven reliability and authenticity.