Regret the style of your engagement ring

Alison, a friend of mine, was at a dinner party earlier this year when her friend revealed her engagement ring for the first time. Her fiancé had chosen it, and although she loved the traditional gesture and didn’t exactly hate the ring, it wasn’t what she’d have chosen herself. As Alison walked into the kitchen she blithely called back, 'Well, don’t worry, you can always upgrade it in 10 years’ time.’ She was thinking about her own mother, who has had her engagement ring re-set twice – once after childbirth and once when she was 60. So when Alison came back into the room and found a group of red-faced men and a full-scale row in progress, she was surprised. What had she said?

Months later, the men still talk about how outrageous her suggestion was. Their argument? An engagement ring is symbolic of a relationship and of a moment in time, and shouldn’t, couldn’t, be 'upgraded’.

Oh, dear. If that’s true then sensitive types, read no further because I’ve done something you won’t like. I’ve pimped my engagement ring.

So sue me. I never liked it. I lived with it for 10 years, and all it had started to symbolise for me was that a decade ago I made a very dull choice, which I then had to wear on my hand for the rest of my life.

Yes, it was my own fault. If the ring had been of my husband’s choosing, I would have worried about questioning his taste and/or offending his feelings. When I hear about classic engagements, with a man sweeping down on one knee to proffer a creation he has lovingly designed himself, or a grand old family heirloom, I swoon – but only from a sense of panic and impending doom. If I got it wrong about my own ring, how on earth could someone else, even the love of my life, get it right?

My ring was a pretty princess-cut white solitaire diamond set on a platinum band. A classic engagement ring. And therein lay the problem: B-O-R-I-N-G.

It staggers me that I got it so wrong, but then I went into the thing blind. I remember reading online about 'the four Cs’ – cut, carat, clarity and colour – so I must have done a bit of Googling, but I hadn’t given much thought to the aesthetic I wanted.

I’d had a vague idea that we’d probably go into every jeweller’s on London’s Hatton Garden and then end up buying something at the vintage shop at the end of the street. But when the day came I felt surprisingly silly and self-conscious and wanted the whole thing over with. I certainly didn’t want to troop into every shop on the street, and I was unprepared for the hard sell you can experience on Hatton Garden. We ended up coming away with the first pretty ring I saw.

I suppose I did like it for a little while. But after the novelty of owning a diamond of any kind had worn off, I wondered what I’d been thinking. I felt miserable when I looked at my ring. It didn’t suit me. It didn’t say anything about me.

According to a survey done by the diamond house Vashi last year, 12 per cent of women would change the style of their engagement ring, with 10 per cent altering the size of the stone. But let me get one thing straight: it wasn’t about the size of the stone. I loved the diamond, which is near perfect, but the setting was dull as the proverbial, and I’m in a job where every day I’m exposed to brilliant creativity in fashion and jewellery. So added to the feelings of guilt about not liking the ring that was supposed to symbolise the start of a lifetime with my husband, Jo, I also felt professional shame. I’d been such a doofus.

I stopped wearing it. Murmurs of 'too tight’ or 'just going through a phase’ when Jo inquired as to its whereabouts. More guilt.

But two years ago it came out again after my mum gave me my grandmother’s little gold half-eternity ring set with champagne diamonds. I started wearing it stacked between my engagement ring and my wedding band, and I liked my engagement ring a little better in this group formation.

I also loved the emotional symbolism of having my marriage and my grandmother’s memory all on one hand. The inherited ring was slightly too big, and that gave me the idea to re-set it, bringing both the jewels into one ring – a plan that was neatly filed in the One Day drawer of my mind, along with 'go to Hawaii’, 'move to Bath’ and 'read Finnegans Wake’. Naturally, it was forgotten.

In the meantime, I came across a jeweller called Ruth Tomlinson, whose work sent me a bit gooey. I kept opening her website to ogle her collections – particularly one called Hoard. Tomlinson handcrafts all her pieces, employing an unusual technique of casting rather than setting the stones, giving them a natural look, 'like they have grown together,’ as she puts it. 'It recreates a natural harmony between the materials. There’s beauty in the imperfect; perfectly imperfect.’

I think that’s what I responded to. I realised the problem with my engagement ring was that it was too symmetrical, too neat, too polished, and I am not a neat, symmetrical, polished person. I’m wonky and a bit of a scruff. I think I was probably cast rather than set.

After stalking Tomlinson on Instagram I eventually met her. She has an elfin face and twinkly eyes and a teeny studio in central London that I loved. Originally from Lancashire, she graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art. Her collections are sold in 30 shops around the world, including Liberty in London, and she also works on private commissions.

About 40 per cent of Tomlinson’s work is re-setting. It costs from £780 to have a stone reset in gold, far less than I thought – although only two or three clients a year throw their engagement ring at her, as I eventually did.

Tomlinson doesn’t see anything wrong with re-setting an engagement ring (clearly there may be a certain amount of bias); I liked her point that 'the body renews itself entirely every seven years, so why would your tastes stay the same?’ I already knew her work so well, and then chatting with her about what I wanted – while along the way finding out we shared a love of the countryside, the pre-Raphaelites and Victorian memento mori – could not have been a more different experience from panicking in that jewellery shop 10 years ago. I knew immediately she was the right person to put the magic back on my hand.

It took four weeks to make the new ring, and when I went to pick it up I was only a tiny bit scared that I wouldn’t like it. I’d seen a halfway model, but I was still surprised and enchanted by the finished piece – my engagement stone positioned to the left (wonky) with the seven champagne diamonds scattered among gold granules (one of Tomlinson’s signatures). It looks like a garland or a fairy crown or snowflakes or something I haven’t even thought of yet. It is personal, it is 'me’ and it is more symbolic now of love and death and all life’s wonderful asymmetry. This one, I know, is a keeper.

I realise I haven’t mentioned my husband’s view on any of this – largely because a) he’s a dude and it was very unlikely he would object, and b) there was a possibility he would object, so I didn’t actually tell him until the very last minute.

We were sitting on a plane going on holiday and I was nervous enough to be looking at my hands rather than him. 'I’m going to get my engagement ring re-set,’ I said. 'I’ve found a jeweller. Do you mind?’ He looked across at me, puzzled. 'Of course I don’t mind,’ he said. 'It’s your ring.’ Which was a relief. Dodgy jewellery decisions I may have made, but at least I chose the right guy.

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