You’ve chosen the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. You want to propose with that perfect engagement ring, but you have so many questions.
What type of proposal ring? What should it look like? How much should I spend? Should it be a surprise or should we choose it together? We hope this blog will help you answer some of these questions.
Common Styles and Designs for Customised Gemstone Rings
We’ve created an eclectic range of custom made engagement rings over the years!
Each gemstone ring is drawn and designed based on discussions we’ve had with our clients. We try to gather ideas from their personalities, style profiles, and whims and fancies.
Every dream engagement ring is unique, but here are some overall themes to share.
Classic Gemstone Rings
A lovely pink spinel oval, in a classic halo with rose gold. We added milgrain detailing surrounding the gem, for a vintage touch.
Timeless with a twist
A bespoke teal sapphire engagement ring with a halo (gradient of diamonds from big to small). It has a modern vintage look, from the choice of white and natural white gold, and the fine-setting style using 3-prong claws for the bigger diamonds to create a radiating look.
Naturist Engagement Rings
A custom-made engagement ring with a heart-shaped tanzanite, in a delicate branch-like design. Set in natural white (champagne gold), for those who love an organic twist, with leaf detailing.
Art-deco Vintage
A customised teal sapphire engagement ring in 18k white gold, flanked by a pair of fancy-cut diamonds. Art Deco and geometric shapes form in a vintage style, brought out by the 8-prong setting for the main gem, and milgrain and filigree detailing on the gemstone ring’s shoulders and shank.
Modern Princess Custom Rings
A bespoke modern princess style custom ring, with a cool-blue trillion-shape Aquamarine, laced with diamonds in a flowy white-gold band accented with milgrain detailing.
Crisp and Bold Proposal Rings
With this custom-made engagement ring, we carefully chose the shapes of the gems for a crisp and bold design. The centre stone is an emerald-cut malaia garnet, flanked by tapered-baguette cut diamonds. This creates side steps to highlight the main gem.
The Story Within
We created a bespoke engagement ring to tell the story of where the couple had their first date by the seaside. The colour of the greenish-blue sapphire reflects the sea, and the flowy band highlights the soft waves, adding a personal touch to this creation.
A Play on Shapes
This customised engagement ring features a round chrysoberyl flanked by kite-shaped diamonds. We love playing around with contrasting shapes to create unique and striking pieces. Like with this proposal ring, sometimes minimalism and keeping the design very clean, creates a bold and timeless impression.
What is the difference between engagement rings and wedding bands?
The engagement ring is to make a proposal of marriage to your partner. If she accepts your proposal then you both become engaged, as fiancé and fiancée waiting to be married. It’s like a promise ring, that your fiancée wears to symbolise the commitment you have both made to each other.
Wedding bands are rings created to be worn by both the groom and bride, and are exchanged during the wedding ceremony. They symbolise the commitment to a lifelong journey together, with the vows spoken while they are exchanged.
There are no hard and fast rules with the design of bespoke engagement rings or wedding bands, but there are some general conventions. Some like to stick to what’s conventional, while others like to be completely different, it’s entirely up to you! Engagement rings usually are made with a single primary gemstone surrounded by other decorative gemstones in a classic or more elaborate setting, and there are many ways to personalise the custom-made design.
While wedding bands usually have only smaller setting stones with a thinner shank, or may just have metal work without any gemstones. The wedding bands may be identical in design for both bride and groom, or they can be very different. The groom’s wedding band is typically made without any gemstones and wider, and some unique texturing can be done on the gold or platinum. While the bride’s wedding band is more likely to have some smaller coloured gemstones or diamonds, with a thinner shank, and can be designed to stack perfectly together with the engagement ring for a seamless look and feel.
Stacking bespoke engagement rings with wedding bands
The great thing about making bespoke engagement rings and wedding bands is you can design them to stack nicely when worn together. Below we show some of the pieces we’ve specially created for our clients.
Above, we created a cherry-blossom themed engagement ring with a portrait-cut pink tourmaline, with pear, trillion and round-cut diamonds. You can see in the picture how the white-gold engagement ring stacks perfectly with the rose-gold wedding band with round diamonds, beneath it.
A custom-made engagement ring with an ice-blue tourmaline in a trillion shape, with a delicate wave-themed design, fits perfectly with the diamond-studded wedding band.
Do couples come to create the customised engagement rings together?
In our experience the couple usually comes together at least for the first meeting to choose the gemstones and discuss design ideas. Couples may finalise the piece together before craftsmanship, then the fiancé will come to collect the final piece by himself and choose a time to propose.
Some men do want a full surprise and will come by themselves. We can look through pictures of your significant other to get a sense of their dress style, favourite colours, and an idea of their personality to better understand what your fiancée would like. We’ll sketch out some ideas and help to narrow it down with more detailed drawings to create that unique engagement ring!
How much to budget for an engagement ring?
As bespoke jewellery designers, we can create a wide range of custom rings to suit different budgets. Ultimately, the quality, rarity and size of the gemstones, the complexity of the design, and ring size would influence the cost of the custom-made engagement rings.
A good budget for a bespoke engagement ring with a beautiful coloured gemstone as the centre stone and some diamonds and/or other coloured setting stones to complement the piece, could be around SGD5,000 to SGD8,000.
For those with a budget of around SGD3,000, we can create custom-made engagement rings with more classic designs and use smaller centre stones.
We also have higher value gemstones and we can create more elaborate designs for those with higher budgets over SGD8,000.
At Calla Lily, as fine jewellers, we only use 18k gold, platinum or titanium, and natural gemstones. So our costs will be higher than jewellers that use 14k, 9k or even gold-plating, and those that use synthetic or simulant stones.
