Wedding Wednesday: Brown Diamond for a Dude

Two years ago, I shared this photo of a brown-diamond engagement ring that I custom-made for a man to wear. (It’s shown next to one of my own platinum styles.)

It appears that’s the ONLY photo of that ring that I ever posted on the blog! I realized that today as I was going through the thousands of photos on my phone, trying to delete a few. (Hey, I have cute dogs and cats — they deserve a lot of photo ops!) That’s when I came across these never-posted work-in-progress photos starring the 2+ carat brown diamond.

When I first saw the stone at my gem dealer, it was in a temporary setting, to give potential buyers an idea of how it might be worn.

Let me tell you, it was difficult to find a sizable diamond in a rich chocolate brown like this. Most of the options I saw were barely beige and much smaller than this.

I took the photos above at the diamond dealer’s office and sent them to my customer in California. She was pretty sure that this was the diamond that she wanted to pop the question with, but she was nervous. (People do get very nervous about buying something as emotionally significant as engagement rings!) Luckily, she passed through New York on business and was able to see it in person and approve the purchase.

Then we moved onto the design, at which point I was a little nervous myself, because this engagement ring was going to be a surprise, and I always prefer the recipient to be involved with the design. That’s the best way to guarantee everyone is happy. We considered a chunky “East-West” setting for the emerald-cut (rectangular) stone with a lot of accent diamonds, because my customer’s first instinct was to do a bling-y, badass ring.

Then she decided that was too risky, so we went for the more classic, pared-down look that you saw in the very first photo in this post. Here’s another look, without the distraction of the unrelated platinum ring.

Of course, the 18K yellow gold setting still had plenty of my signature heft to it. I like ’em thicc.

I still wonder if he would have loved the in-your-face style of the original design we had, but the most important thing is that HE SAID YES.

I’ve done a few videos talking about engagement rings for men as well as gender-neutral or simply nontraditional wedding jewelry. Here’s an interview I did with Severine Ferrari, the editor in chief of Engagement 101.

In this other video, I talk about different levels of customization in wedding jewelry. There are a lot of websites that will tell you you’re customizing a ring because they you pick your own diamond and choose from among a variety of mass-produced settings. I take customization much further, making totally unique settings from scratch.

By the way, you’ll also get a more gorgeous stone if you have a jewelry expert do the sourcing for you. Sure, you can read up on the 4 C’s of diamond grading and tick off options on a website, but an experienced eye picks up on subtle differences that can only be seen on person. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, not in the algorithm! I’ll stick to your budget too. If you’re interested in an custom-made ring by me, holla at me at info at wendybrandes dot com. Let’s talk!