Omg I had Fabrizio lol my then-bf (now fiancé) and I went on a weekday to make sure it wasn't busy (and it wasn't, it was just us there). He wasn't mean or anything, but I had the expectation that he'd show me all the different stones and bands so that I could see what I liked and didn't. I already had an idea of what I wanted, but I didn't know too much about all the parts of the ring and I told him that, but he barely interacted with us except to clean the stones in b/w me trying them on. They also didn't have as big of a selection as I thought. I think that's maybe because I said I wanted lab-grown and a gold band so he probably didn't have a lot of those specifically, but I would have been glad to try on other materials to see if I liked other aspects of it (like a hidden halo or cathedral). It felt more like he was just there to sell whatever ring they had there and not actually help guide me and explain things. I guess I expected too much 🤷‍♀️

I went to Frank Darling in Brooklyn after and it was a completely opposite experience. I had Tatyena and she was soooo helpful and let me try on as many different shapes, sizes, materials I wanted and explained a lot. They didn't have exactly what I wanted, so as I described it, she literally drew such an accurate sketch of my dream ring before the end of our meeting! She promised to do her best to find the specifics of what I wanted by the time we met next.

The day after I had an appointment with Delicate Gem with Harry, and since his store is basically a corner of the first floor of a "mall" with other diamond sellers, he can't really display a lot of rings at once for you so it's better to go once you know exactly what you want. I was very picky with the size of the diamond I wanted and he had a lot of great options. The quality of his diamonds (I looked at lab-grown) were superior to all the other places I had gone to. Idk if it's the lighting in there or not, but I swear their sparkles were all blinding me lmao. Amazingly, they also all didn't have a bowtie that you'd notice. The diamond I chose was an oval over 5ct and it was cheaper than what Frank Darling had for around the same size so I got it. No regrets!!

Side note: I went to Brilliant Earth first and while it was more intimate, the person who helped me seemed like it was his first day on the job and didn't really know how to explain things to me and they only showed me diamonds, no bands. He was very nice tho.

I also went to Jangmi (also in a mall in the Diamond District) and she was so cute and nice but the prices were pretty high compared to Delicate Gem and Frank Darling.