Bride-to-be Blogger Carolyn: Designing My Ring

The ring.

I’m not much of a jewelry person, but I definitely knew for a long time what kind of engagement ring I wanted: a plain, platinum band with a big Asscher-cut diamond solitaire. However, many of you have seen the picture to the right, here, already from my engagement blog post—my actual ring turned out quite different from what I had originally envisioned. Don’t get me wrong—I love my ring! It just took a bit of compromise, patience, and footwork to get to the finished product.

Chris really isn’t a fan of the diamond industry and was pretty set on choosing an alternative stone for my ring. This news took a little bit of time for me to process—I never really considered an engagement ring that wasn’t a diamond before. But, after scouring the Internet for pictures of other styles and stones, we both agreed that we loved sapphires. Sapphires come in many different colors, but I love the color blue anyway, so that choice was easy.

Chris and I took a walk down Jeweler’s Row to look at sapphire rings, and the pickings were really slim. Feeling dejected and disappointed, we wandered over to Halloween, based on a few good recommendations from some friends. If you haven’t been in before, I highly recommend it. Displays of unique new and antique jewelry literally cover the store. We met the owner, Henri David, who spent a significant amount of time showing us what he had in stock, educating us about sapphires, and discussing custom jewelry options. After we left we both agreed: Our future engagement ring was going to be a custom ring from Halloween.

To be honest, the design process was difficult for an impatient, uncreative person like me. We made multiple trips to Halloween to go over ring style, choose stones, and approve wax models. We also had to have the ring redone when I didn’t like the finished product (truly my own fault for approving a wax model that I thought was too bulky). The entire process from that first trip down Jeweler’s Row to the finished product took about four months. I have to say, Henri David was incredibly easy to work with and created an end product that I love. However, in the future, I don’t think custom anything is the way for me—I was really stressed during the process about not knowing exactly how the finished product would look and feel.

Chris ended up approving the final product on his own so I didn’t get to see the ring until he proposed (which killed me!). In the end, it was exactly what I had pictured and I was so happy with the results.

Did you have a role in the ring shopping (or designing) process? Or was that completely left up to him?

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