Engagement rings, personified!

Hey friends of H & A! Do I smell love in the air? Wedding season is coming up in a couple of months! I know some of you are bound to become a misses or a mister! When the engagement ring hunt begins, there are two steps to engagement ring shopping. You can start with either the stone or the mounting (the ring part). Each is important in its own way. The mounting gives personality to the overall ring and allows the ring to personify the lucky wearer! Let’s have a look at some different styles for engagement rings.

• Four prong solitaire setting

• Six prong solitaire setting

• Claw prong solitaire setting

• Two-tone tension set bypass setting with a pear shaped diamond

• Halo setting

• Three stone setting

• Bezel set solitaire setting

• Princess and emerald cut bezel setting

• Four prong cathedral setting

When you have an idea of what kind of engagement ring style your future partner likes, you need to consider the type of metal that they may want. Yellow gold, white gold and platinum are the typical precious metals used. It’s also important to know if your partner has a metal allergy since many white gold settings have nickel in the alloy, and a nickel allergy is more common than you might think. So make sure to find out beforehand!

A word about maintenance: Over time you may have to get white gold replated. White gold gets its shiny look from rhodium plating. Rhodium is a member of the platinum group of metals, known for high reflectance.

All new rings have this plating, but it does eventually wear off.

One thing to consider with platinum is that it is a softer metal, so, a platinum ring will get scratched and dented more easily than white or yellow gold. This means that you will need to re-polish and re-buff platinum every so often. Re-dipping, buffing and polishing can all be done in our store!

Now that you have brushed up on the different types of styles of engagement rings, you’ll have a better idea of what to look for and what not to look for when you are shopping (at H & A, of course! ).