Missing the point again. She's going to assume its 'real', so are you going to lie to her when she asks if you spent 1k on lab vs 10k on real? If you don't think real diamonds mean anything (which is reasonable) then why even bother going the fake/lab route? That means you must care in SOME way.
No one's arguing that real diamonds are actually worth what they cost, but if you happen to have a girl that grew up dreaming about one then that could be worth it to you. If this is the case, then the lab created is not a substitute, unless maybe she is a chemist and actually cares about the structure of the gem.
And if your girl doesn't care about a nice ring, good for you. If you say you're waiting to find one that isn't so petty then good freakin luck.
You're missing the point. Anyone who is in the know will tell you that an amazing quality cut (e.g. one that scores straight 10's on GemEx's Brilliance Scope) will make up for even an SI2 diamond so the money is actually going into the cut, not necessarily the type of diamond. You're still paying thousands upon thousands for a brand name cut, so the actual diamond doesn't matter - only in the sense that it's a diamond. She's not going to give a shit where the diamond came from, especially one with a branded cut and I've even seen very reputable branded cuts at Jared's with questionable paperwork (IGI certs). Why? Because the cut makes up for a shitty stone, so Jared is maximizing their profits but putting a $5K cut on a subpar I-SI2 $2K diamond and then selling it for $12K. In the end, the girl is still getting the shiniest rock in the world (yes, shinier than 99% of her friends who went the costco route) since it has the best cut in the world, diamond quality be damned.
So back to my original point, if you could get a branded cut on a lab rock then that would most definitely be the best bang for your buck. The sucky thing is that unless you know someone who can do these cuts, you're still paying the markup to the person who got the rock cut. Therein lies the profit (on a shitty rock after the cut) for the guy who is hooked up with cutters. It'd be nice if we could just call a reputable diamond cutter in the phone book who was trained to do xyz cut but the industry has it locked down so this would never happen.
When the rubber meets the road, light reflection is the be all end all of diamonds because it's all women can see when they're with their friends, not carats, not cert, not natural vs lab, etc. Only performance.