News broke Thursday night that Mariah Carey and her billionaire boyfriend James Packer were engaged after dating for less than a year. Now details on her gorgeous - and gigantic - engagement ring have been released.
The $7.5 million diamond ring has a 35-carat center stone and was designed by Wilfredo Rosado, who has been the 45-year-old singer's friend for more than 25 years and is her go-to jeweler, according to Us Weekly. It features a massive emerald-cut diamond, which is surrounded by two tapered baguettes and is finished in a platinum setting.
"I took the standards super high," Rosado told Vogue. "I wanted to create a ring that could not be measured up to. What is really most interesting about the ring are the proportions - the stone is so large, but we were able to create a beautiful balance with the overall simplicity of the design. It was about mixing simplicity with volume, which is very difficult to do."
"She obviously has a strong point of view about what she really likes," he continued. "We have the same taste, and when it really came down to it, I really wanted to create something that was about new beginnings. I wanted to give her something supersophisticated and something that took away all of the embellishments that a lot of people use when they design engagement rings these days. But it is epic. It's an epic ring for an epic time in her life."
Rosado and Packer only had about two weeks to design the ring, and he worked 12-hour days with an "army of craftsman." He also left a small empty blank space on the back of the band so Packer could eventually engrave something sentimental to his wife-to-be.
"He wanted to create something very rare and very beautiful around this diamond he chose, and I followed his lead," he added. "This was the most challenging piece of jewelry I ever designed. I wanted to create the most gorgeous ring for my dear friend, but I also wanted to create the most stunning ring for one of the most iconic divas of our generation."
In comparison to other massive engagement rings, Kim Kardashian's $8 million 15-carat ring looks to be about the same size due to a similar round solitaire cut. Beyoncé's $5 million 18-carat ring from Jay Z also looks just as big because of the cut.
"If it's a more shallow cut, the diamond might appear to have a larger surface area," diamond expert Kristen Trustey of Forevermark told the New York Daily News. She also added that a halo cut, like the one Kanye West gave Kardashian, can make a stone look much bigger.
