Hi emeraldbride,
Princess are cheaper than rounds if you consider carat weight. However, princesses r cut deeper than rounds (i.e. from side view it's thicker), so a 0.5 carat princess will look quite a bit smaller than a 0.5 round.
I wanted a princess cut at first too, but decided to get round in the end cos it's very hard to find a princess tt's well cut, and princesses tend to be less sparkly than rounds. The way tt the princess is cut causes more light to "leak".
But if you like princess cut, of cos i'll say go ahead and get it, just make sure tt the corners are well protected by the setting so you dun end up with chipped corners in the future. Also check the cert and try to avoid girdles tt are "extremely thin" on the cert.
If you don't mind considering an online diamond, Barry at
www.exceldiamonds.com is an expert at princess cuts. And
www.whiteflash.com has this princess cut tt has clipped-off corners (called X-factor) that looks a lot like the Tiffany Lucida. Those were the places where i went to look at when i wanted a princess cut back then.
It's quite hard to find princesses in Singapore. We went to 3 shopping malls and only saw ONE princess tt's above 0.5 carat!
I was super in love with this one at tt time and wanted to get it. But now i've decided to just go with a round. They show the actual picture at this URL:
http://www.whiteflash.com/xfactor/X-Factor-cut-diamond-10.htm
BTW, an X-factor looks bigger than a typical princess of a similar weight.