In February, The Knot fielded its third annual Engagement & Jewelry Study, canvasing 14,000 brides and 1,750 grooms on The Knot Wedding Network to assess their thoughts on the bridal jewelry buying process, from how they conducted research to choosing gifts for their wedding party.

We’ve broken down the highlights into four distinct categories focused on the research, the retailer, the engagement ring, and after the engagement.

The Research

• 9 of 10 brides have smartphones, 59% have an iPhone, and 31% are Android users. And more than half have tablets.

• Brides are more comfortable shopping with their fiancé: 83% say they are very/somewhat comfortable looking at different ring styles when visiting retailers with their fiancé (compared with 74% who visit without)

• 20% use mobile devices to give ring ideas/hints to fiancés

• Grooms are more comfortable evaluating, discussing, and shopping for diamonds than brides (59% versus 42%).

• 63% of brides use their mobile devices to visit wedding planning sites or to look for rings

• Before the engagement, he researches for roughly 4.4 months; he visits about 4 retailers and sees an average of 24 rings

JCK