Okay, so since Steve has bought the centre stone, I can’t buy the setting from Cartier, so I have to get it made.
Getting quotes has been an interesting experience. Jewellers won’t give me a quote via email without seeing the centre stone, however Retailers will (?).
Jewellers will take longer to make the ring as they need to source the materials. Diamond brokers have suppliers, so can make/supply quicker, with a 1-week turnaround to have the ring made.
Some Jewellers are anti-platinum, for their own purposes – they can’t re-use the platinum filings, unlike white gold so they don’t like using it.
18K white gold needs rhodium plating every year ($60 each ring) and at the moment the quotes I’m getting for platinum are only $500 more than white gold, so platinum would pay for itself in 4 years anyway. And you don’t need to do a thing to platinum, just buff the scratches out once in a while. I’d prefer that to giving my rings in every year, it makes me slightly nervous that they’d swap my stone out, a rare occurence, but I’ve heard stories of it happening!
I’ve also had a few jewellers not comfortable with replicating a Cartier design. I’m going to tweak it anyway (6 prongs instead of 4) but this makes jewellers a bit tetchy! Lol!
my secret wedding 