We’re always thrilled when clients come to us for a custom designed engagement ring—not only do we enjoy it as a creative exercise, we also just love getting to know our couples and being part of this exciting moment in their lives.
What does working with us on a custom designed engagement ring involve? Well, we’ve perfected the process to create a seamless, collaborative, and fun experience from start to finish.
It’s fair to say that given our tenure at Hearts on Fire, The Leo Diamond, Scott Kay, ArtCarved, and other prestigious bridal jewelry companies, we have amassed decades of expertise in the bridal category. We have personally sourced the finest quality diamonds for a range of clients, and designed entire collections that went on to be sold at top independent jewelry stores around the country. Yes, we’re an authority on this topic (and it’s one of our favorites!), but you will never feel intimidated in our comfortable, intimate studio and there will be absolutely no high-pressure sales tactics.
We listen to your needs, present you with solid facts and ideas, and offer you our most candid advice so that we can land on an engagement ring design concept you love!
Timing
Allow three to six weeks. Ordering a custom designed engagement ring with us is like having a special, elaborate meal cooked for you from scratch—it’s a multi-step process that will take some time to execute. We encourage our clients to use this wait time to plan the perfect proposal (we can help with that, too—more on that below).
The Consultation
Contact us to make an appointment (by the way, this can happen via Zoom or FaceTime—our clients are based all over the country!).
To have the most productive custom engagement ring design consultation, we encourage you to give some thought in advance to…
Your budget.
Our goal is to get you the very best engagement ring within your budget.
We’re not going to upsell you or throw out design ideas that we can’t execute within your engagement ring budget parameters, so let us know what you’re thinking.
Your style preferences.
It’s helpful if we can at least know the shape or cut of the center stone you want, as this will allow us to streamline our session to focus on custom engagement ring designs that match your vision. Instagram or Pinterest photos are great. We can also use our previous work as inspiration, and can show you samples of popular engagement ring styles we have done in the past. If you have a specific custom designed engagement ring idea that you want us to bring to life from scratch, we can sketch, and make recommendations, on the spot. In this scenario, we’re often using a client’s heirloom diamonds—make sure you bring the stones with you to the design session if you want to use them!
Sometimes two design sessions are necessary. In the second session, based on your feedback and budget, we’ll present a curated set of center diamonds to review (we can send videos if we’re doing the session virtually).
Pricing
The cost of a custom designed engagement ring varies, and the price we quote will account for our design time, the materials (including the center stone you choose), and the labor that executing the design will require. Most of the time we’re able to ballpark a quote in the first design session and when everyone’s ready to proceed, we request a deposit. The balance is due at the time of delivery.
Review Stage
Once the custom engagement ring design concept is finalized, we convert the engagement ring sketch to a CAD (computer aided design) format. Because of the full-service nature of how we work—and because your engagement ring is fully customized to your specifications—you can expect us to be in touch with work-in-progress updates.
Pickup & Proposal
You can pick up your custom designed engagement ring in person or we will ship it to you fully insured. We’re always happy to advise our local clients on proposal ideas and logistics. In fact, there’s a beautiful archway overlooking the marsh right outside our studio—super peaceful, romantic, and relatively secluded, making it a great Connecticut shoreline proposal spot. And then we can have Champagne and flowers waiting for you! If you want to plan something really special and elaborate, we can connect you with our event planning partner, Jubilee Events, which specializes in planning proposals (and weddings!), complete with a professional photographer. 
