Re: brides jewelery
with the price of gold these days, if you can find a good quality gold-plated set that doesn't look cheap and tacky (and there are certainly excellent sets out there), then it is worth investing it.
For my wedding, we were initially going to get a gold plated set, but ended up getting a decent size (not too large/not too small) set from Dubai. It did not come with a jhumar and teeka. I wore my MIL's jhumar and teeka on both the barat and walima day. It just didn't make any sense to any of us on buying them seperately, gold or artificial. Fortunately, my MIL's set matched really well with both my shadi set and the set they gave me for the walima. Plus I wanted to wear it cause they just don't make jhumar's like that any more.