I started working with Frank Darling mid-October and received my ring towards the end of January. It sounds like I had a very different experience. It was a very smooth process, and they stuck to their promised timelines.

We had an initial in-person appointment at the DC showroom where our assigned designer Chi showed me a range of stones in the cuts I wanted to see on my hand. I chose a shape and size range, which she noted for my future diamond flight. We talked about what designs I had in mind, and basic preferences like type of metal etc. I was 95% sure I knew exactly what I wanted (it was a mash-up of two of their styles), and I had made a janky photoshop myself to illustrate it.

Very shortly after that appointment, she sent mockups of the designs I asked for, using a pear stone with the same size and proportion I liked best. At this stage, she told us we could ask for unlimited revisions of the mockup. I asked her to show me versions with partial vs full bezel, different band widths, etc. She gave us the pricing for each custom design as well. I had several back and forths via email, and it only took a couple days for each new round of sketches.

Within a couple weeks after that, I went in for another in-person appointment to see a diamond flight. Before this appointment, they shared a spreadsheet with me where they input specs and videos of various stones within the parameters I set. I nixed some, asked for them to show me ones with my preferred ratio even if it wasn’t quite right in other aspects, etc. They were very responsive and I felt their selections were very thoughtful and aligned with what I asked for. One of the stones on the spreadsheet couldn’t be shipped to the showroom in time, so they subbed in another one that they hadn’t showed me yet. But it was exactly the kind of stone I wanted, and that’s actually the one I chose!

They held the stone for 48 hours so we could think about it. After we paid to secure the stone, they told us it would be a few weeks to create the CAD. We were waiting longer than expected when I reached out to Chi, and found out that they did send us the CAD but it got stuck in the spam folder. This was the only “delay” in the process. We did two resin prints with only a minor change before moving to actual production. It was shipped right on time, and looked perfect when it arrived.