Custom Wedding Ring ?

Q: We all know how hard it is to find the perfect wedding ring...sometimes it is a lot easier to have a custom ring made, plus it is just that much more special. Just wanted to tip everyone off to a great place to buy loose diamonds for just such rings online. The name of the company is Palace Jewelry, you can check out their web site at www.palacejewelry.com Oh, they also sell used rolexes.

A:We had our wedding rings made. MINE was a disaster, but I won't go into that because I am still pretty upset about that. It was fairly complicated so I presume my problems were unique. My husband had a white gold band made--nothing too special, he just had a certain width and degree of rounding on the surface in mind, and then wanted it to taper a bit so it was narrower on the underside. It cost us just under $300. It did not require too much workmanship, or it would have been more. Workmanship is expensive on an original ring. It can quickly become more expensive than the gold itself. One thing that did surprise me, when we looked, is the amazing variety of rings out there. You might be able to find one you like and save yourself some money. We had all 3 of our rings made; we found the cost to be cheaper than "ready-made", since making a ring = working directly with the wholesale

manufacturer. The only additional cost was paying for the ring's "wax molds", which ran about $35 per band. But since we weren't paying retail, the overall cost was less than what we'd seen in stores. Be aware that platinum is about 3x more expensive than white gold. My rings are white gold, my husband's is a platinum and yellow gold mix. My wedding band cost $150 (3 mm wide, size 6 women's, custom-fit for my engagement ring). The design is very similar to one offered by Tiffany's -- for $450. Dave's ring was $850 (9 mm wide, men's size 10, 2 outer bands of platinum, 1 inner band of yellow gold). Similar men's rings at Macy's were running over $2K.