Mardon Jewelers at the Mission Inn

Last Fall, we were contacted by a long time customer whose daughter had a real problem. Her daughter, Kirstyn, was engaged to be married September 2010. Kirstyn and fiance Alastair, a British citizen, were working in the Cayman Islands where they had a local jeweler make a custom engagement ring using her one carat family diamond.

Problem was, the ring was nothing at all like she wanted. She had asked for something delicate, naturalistic and flowing– the picture shows how her new ring was a completely different style, so she was very disappointed and upset. An engagement ring is very important to a young couple, especially the bride, because it symbolizes true love and commitment.

Kirstyn’s mother wanted advice as to what could be done– could the ring be remodeled? I told her that remodeling this particular ring would be difficult to carry off successfully because of it’s heavy construction and the way the small diamonds were set.  Our opinion in this case was that the best solution would be to start over.

Since KIrstyn and Alastair had already spent money on the first ring (more about this later), they were understandably concerned about the cost of a new one. Because of our experience doing custom jewelry for over 30 years and our use of state-of-the-art CAD/CAM technology, we knew we could make the ring she wanted at a price they could afford. With our upfront quote and commitment to make the ring the way she wanted, they decided to go ahead.

Alastair had done a rather nice sketch that featured pave diamonds entwined with a natural leaf motif.

We were able to communicate effectively back and forth to Kirstyn and Alastair in the Caymans via email– daughter Jenny created this CAD rendition as a first try

We got feedback from Kirstyn about making the ring slimmer with stronger detailing on the leaves of the design…

We revised and tweaked our concept a bit to finalize this beautiful design, much to Kirstyn’s delight.

The finished ring turned out beautifully…

She was just ecstatic when she first saw it!

As a final note, during the process of creating this ring, we were able to assist the couple in another way. They asked me how to deal with the jeweler in the Cayman Islands. They wanted to return the ring to him to remove the center stone. My advice was to keep the situation cool and cordial– after all, he had given it his best shot, just missed the target. That would allow him to save face and do the right thing. In the end, he refunded their money and removed the stone for them, no charge!

Kirstyn sent a very nice letter that you can see on our testimonials page.

Tags: CAD/CAM, Custom Design, Engagement Ring, family diamond, Mardon Jewelers

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Custom Jewelry, Jewelry Facts, Jewelry Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.