How to find ring size, what you need to do when you're planning to propose, and what timeline everything happens on.
This one’s pretty straightforward.
Since we’re jewelers and not event planners, let’s look at the first three in a little more detail.
In summary: stop in at a jewelry store and ask to be measured, or if you’re shopping with a concierge jeweler like us, we’ll take care of it.
Ring size is:
Ring size directly correlates to finger or ring diameter. Different countries have different scales, but we’ll be talking about US ring size since most of our business is done in the US.
Sizes are generally offered in full sizes (‘7’, ‘11’) and half sizes (‘7.5’, ‘4.5’) many jewelers also offer quarter sizes (‘5.75’). Any division smaller than that is hard to manufacture within tolerance and hard to discern by clients.
Go to a jewelry shop and ask to be sized. They will have metal sizers that will fit very similarly to a finished ring. It generally takes less than 2 minutes to find your size.
While they do work passably, we do not recommend sizing yourself with cheap plastic sizers, as the shape of the sizer cross section, the width of the sizer, and the material of the sizer all affect the feeling of the fit.
We also do not recommend guessing ring size out of thin air. A ring that is 2 sizes off will look bad in pictures at best and likely won’t fit at all. Sacrifice a bit of surprise and make sure to get an accurate size before the ring is made.
Find out more about how ring size changes with time and what to do if you get the wrong size
In summary: don’t guess their style unless they really really value surprise. Make a day of it and go shopping or browser around online to see what they like.
Everyone has a style and it’s not always what you think it is or the same as yours. We’ve had many people assume they can guess their partner’s preference without their input, and maybe 5% of them have been even slightly close.
We highly recommend involving your partner in the shopping process and having them talk to jewelers with you and maybe even give you a reference board of pictures of rings that they like.
A common theme at Noble is to have a couple work with us together up through final design approval, at which point the proposee steps out of the process and let’s their partner handle pickup up of the piece and springing the surprise proposal.
The biggest aid you can offer your jeweler is having a list of pictures of styles the wearer likes, and maybe some that they don’t. If you start a conversation with a designer at Noble with those references, they’ll know exactly what to draw to nail you aesthetic.
In summary: don’t expect to be able to buy a ring same day. Many styles will have to be modified (which may take a few days), made to order (which may take a few weeks), or custom designed (which can sometimes take months)
When you decide on a ring, you may have one of several ways to buy:
The first option is the fastest, but a jeweler will rarely have the exact style of ring ready to go in the finger size you need with the center stone size and shape that you want.
If all that needs changed is the size, that can often be done same day or next day.
Often, the mounting will have to be re-ordered or re-made to fit your choice of center stone. Depending on the jeweler and if they outsource, this may take several days to several weeks.
If you need the style of the mounting itself modified, or you need to design something from scratch to get the style you’re after, that can take several weeks or more depending on the scope of the project.
Some jewelers (like us) who make their mountings in house can turnaround custom projects within a week or two of design approval, but you should still allow several weeks total to handle the back-and-forth of getting the design exactly as you want it.
That’s most of what there is to it. From here, just start a conversation with your preferred jeweler and they’ll walk you through the details.