Why Should I Shop Local for an Engagement Ring?

An engagement ring is a life-changing investment that symbolizes your one-of-a-kind love, requiring dedicated research and expert advice. So, shopping for one should not be done carelessly. Your engagement ring shopping experience should be just as meaningful and memorable as the day you propose and the day you officially say, “I do.”

No matter who you are, where you live, or what your budget is – you will never have an engagement ring shopping experience as extraordinary as when you choose to shop at your local jeweler. Locally owned retailers love what they do, love what they sell, and love the people who walk through their doors. For this reason, local jewelers are dedicated to providing you an experience and engagement ring far superior to that of their online and national jewelry competitors.

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Valina Pear Shaped Halo Engagement Ring - R9920WY

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It is normal to feel intimidated when entering a jewelry store, especially if you have no idea what you are looking for. We suggest researching engagement rings online then shopping in-store with a local jewelry expert to purchase your true love’s final ring. For example, if your partner likes engagement ring posts, social media is the perfect place to start your online search. By stalking their pages, you can discover which ring styles, diamond cuts, and gold colors your partner prefers. For example, do they like classic, sleek solitaire engagement rings or more trendy engagement rings like our pear-cut split-shank style R9930WY?

Engagement ring social media posts also link you to those jewelers’ websites which are useful research tools. Jewelry sites offer diverse selections of engagement rings for you to browse. They also provide educational information and blogs to help you navigate the complicated process of buying a quality, budget-friendly engagement ring and center stone.

For example, if you need extra guidance, here are more useful engagement ring blogs:

The internet is a powerful tool, allowing people to buy virtually anything online without leaving the comfort of their homes. This includes engagement rings. Besides being convenient, online shopping is popular because a website can hold a much larger inventory than a physical store can, giving you many more options to choose from. The problem with online shopping is that by making the process “simpler,” it complicates the shopping experience by pressuring you to choose the perfect ring all by yourself.

When you literally have thousands of rings to choose between, only a vague idea of the style you are looking for, and nothing but e-commerce shopping filters to guide you, people get overwhelmed and make regretful engagement ring purchases. To avoid making a multi-thousand-dollar mistake, instead of blindly online shopping, you need a jeweler’s help. A jeweler can show you what all this engagement ring jargon means with real jewelry you can hold in your hand. No online jewelry site’s live chat or Q&A page can come close to the intimate level of care and service face-to-face local jewelry experts provide people just like you.

The Reputable Local Jeweler Experience

Local jewelry stores are full of experts who are excited to help you along your engagement ring shopping journey. If seeking the best of the best, when choosing which local jewelry store to shop at, you might ask if they have a GIA Certified Gemologist. A GIA Gemologist is a diamond and gem expert who loves nothing more than helping people discover the perfect ring and diamond duet for the one they love. These local jewelry specialists will create a personalized shopping experience for you that is not pushy nor filled with corny big-store sales taglines, but instead, filled with positive and productive information that will reassure you of your purchase.

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Local jewelers pride themselves on having a great reputation. This reputation comes from their one-of-a-kind shopping experience and their quality inventory. Again, unlike online retailers, brick and mortar stores have limited space. To fully utilize this space, jewelers are very particular about the brands and jewelry they display. Therefore, local jewelers mainly display quality jewelry fashioned with quality diamonds and metal alloys. This factor is especially important if you are shopping for engagement rings with a lot of side stones like with R9995W because you want that ring’s shank to sparkle. A truly brilliant sparkle cannot be guaranteed with a ring you have only viewed online before ordering.

Finally, shopping for engagement rings online might seem convenient, but getting any maintenance on that engagement ring after the purchase is not convenient. Even if an online retailer offers free resizing, cleaning, or warranty repairs, you still must go through the tiresome process of getting the maintenance done. Here are the typical steps involved:

Request the maintenance by either filling out an online form or calling custom service
Wait for a response, not even knowing if your ring’s issue qualifies for maintenance
If you do qualify – print the shipping label the jeweler provides, package the ring securely on your own, and then take the package to the post office to get shipped
Wait weeks for the maintenance to be completed and for your ring to be safely returned to your partner’s finger, without the guarantee that it was quality checked by experts

We don’t know about you, but that process sounds tedious. Whereas if you bought your ring from a local jeweler, you know exactly where to go, and the jeweler will take your ring that day for whatever maintenance is required. The maintenance will likely take as long as with the online retailer, but you might get it back quicker since there is less shipping involved.

How to Choose an Engagement Ring Center Stone

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Have you ever seen something absolutely stunning in real life, like the moon and stars? But after taking a hundred pictures of it, none of your images looked remotely as good or captured the innate sparkly and glowing appearance of the real thing? This is a similar problem with jewelry photography, especially when photographing diamonds. Trust us, even with the top-quality cameras and photographers, diamonds do not photograph well.

Diamonds require extensive editing to look even slightly as attractive as they do in person. For example, the diamonds on our stunning scalloped straight engagement ring R9331W looked dark and dull before being touched up. The problem is, even after expertly editing the diamonds, what you are seeing on the website is in fact edited diamonds, not the real thing. Due to this universal jewelry issue, you cannot confidently choose a loose center stone for your engagement ring based on a picture or video you see online, even if it is from a top jewelry retailer with 360-degree angles of their diamonds. The only way to truly see a diamond’s true nature and compare its cut, clarity, color, carat, and shape with other center stones, is by going into your local retailer and looking at their diamonds in person.

Important details to compare when looking at diamonds in person:

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Cut: How the deepness of the diamond’s cut and quality of its facets impact how sparkly the stone appears – a shallow or deep diamond will look duller than an ideal cut
Clarity: How the natural white and black specks make a diamond look clear vs. cloudy
Color: How a diamond’s tone is impacted by the color of its shank – a lower grade K diamond might look perfectly fine in a rose or yellow gold setting, but the yellow-tint of the K diamond might be obvious and unattractive set in white gold or platinum
Carat: How the first three Cs are determined by the diamond size you need – you can get away with lower quality cuts/clarities/colors in smaller center stones than in larger center stones because larger diamond magnify flaws more
All 4 Cs: How lighting affects a diamond’s overall appearance – check the diamond you want in natural, LED, yellow, and dim lighting to determine how truly brilliant it is
Shape: How a center stone shape creates different light effects in diamonds – see why rounds are considered the most brilliant, why emeralds like R9568W look like glass, or why elongated diamonds like ovals, marquises, and pears produce the “bow-tie effect”

Why Choose Local Jewelers Over National Jewelers?

National jewelers offer a mixture of the extensive shopping experience online retailers provide and the face-to-face customer service local retailers provide. What they do not have is the unique history and soul found at local jewelers. For example, you can often meet the family who started the local store and see their passion for jewelry. Their business is their pride and joy, so they care for it, their products, and their customers with a level of care that is hard to find elsewhere. To these jewelers, you are not a sale but a new member of their jewelry store family. They want to learn about your unique love story and find out how that story continued after your engagement. Whereas with national retailers, each store is just another retail space to operate. Every one of their stores look the same and are managed the same across the country. So, you might have an okay shopping experience at a national retailer, but they won’t go above and beyond to make that experience truly memorable. Because of this, most local jewelers have better Google and Yelp reviews than their national competitors – just look at the jewelers in your area and you will see the obvious difference in ratings and reviews.

The jewelry at local jewelers is also more select, meaning less stores across the country carry it. So, if you buy an unaltered engagement ring from a local jeweler, it will be much more unique, meaning, very few people will also have that exact same ring. In comparison, most national retailers fill all their stores with the same product. So, if you buy an unaltered engagement ring from one of their many locations, chances are, hundreds of other people will have the exact same ring signifying their unique love – ironic right? In an age of individuality, having a unique ring is very valuable, and local jewelers have a lot more to offer that consumer market.

Speaking of uniqueness, if you want a one-of-a-kind engagement ring, your local jewelers are much more eager to work with you to create a custom design. By carrying jewelry from brands like Valina, local jewelers can ensure high-quality custom engagement ring designs created by you for you. For example, if you wanted the unique criss cross shank of R9639W and the dramatic double-halo head of R9642W, your local Valina jeweler could work with us to create that dream ring! Or if you wanted a completely original design, like an under-the-sea inspired engagement ring with blue sapphires and nautical hand engraving, we can make that ring a reality too! Larger jewelry store chains with cookie-cutter manufacturing processes are less likely to accommodate your desire for customization, especially with 100% original designs.

Blend two styles to create a custom engagement ring.

Finally, shopping locally is also a good habit because it supports the local economy instead of supporting a large corporation. Corporations are in the business for money, not the experience of bringing customers like you a lifetime of joy. Corporations also use their big brand names to over-charge for products – a national jeweler will charge you more for a “better” name brand whereas a local jeweler will charge more for better quality diamonds, gold, and craftsmanship. So, theoretically speaking, you would spend more money at a big national jeweler than at your local jeweler for the exact same engagement ring design and center stone. The local jewelers do not want to cheat you, they want to treat you and give back to the community.

If you have quality jewelry, quality service, and individuality in mind, find your very own local Valina retailer with our jeweler locator! Even if your local retailer doesn’t have a specific style in stock, we will send it to them for you to view for free! With the Valina promise as well as our local jewelers’ expert advice and care, chances are you will have an amazing engagement ring shopping experience and you will propose with a stunning diamond ring that will take your true love’s breath away for years and years to come.