Regarding purchasing the ring itself, the biggest piece of advice I could offer would be to avoid the high st chains, such as Ernest Jones.
I did a reasonable amount of research and found that they were offering smaller and lower quality diamonds for the money than you could get at independant jewellers in places such as Hatton Garden.
If you are going custom then you probably won’t be shopping on the high street anyway.
I’d find a jeweller with whom you can choose the best specific stone, based upon your budget, size, clarity, colour requirements and have them make it into a ring for you.

A website I found that has a good feature for viewing their different designs, is http://www.cooldiamonds.com
They have quite a few different designs and you can rotate the images to look at them from different angles, might give you some ideas.

edit: good luck hiding that frame in your sock before the proposal 😉

Also, good luck fella. Scariest, most exciting and best thing I ever did was proposing to my missus.

Exciting times.

i made one!

I don’t know if this will work for you but when I mentioned to future mrs sid’s father that I was going to pop the question I had the thought that she was incredibly close to her late grandmother so I also asked him about the possibility of using her engagement ring. He agreed and my fiance loves the ring. Its a small and thin wartime ring with a bridge of 5 diamonds on the top and some engraved patterns on it. It looks really nice, a little bit different and it has a lot of personal meaning to my lady.

Stuey01

Cheers dude! Thanks for the site.