Firstly, sorry for this long post, but I really feel the shop my FH went to deserves this credit. He got our proposal ring at Clarity and strongly recommend that buyers out there buy from loose diamond retailers / warehouse. Sure you can get it at any other loose diamond retailer like Josi Gems which also appears to be very popular from this thread. But since we have only been to Clarity and were very satisfied with not just the rings, but also the level of service that we had, we really feel we owe this to Clarity.
Amanda is the lady boss of this shop and she is very knowledgeable. We managed to learn much more about choosing diamonds after she explained it to us. For eg. Did you know, apart from the 4Cs, there are other criterions such as fluoresce which is listed on the cert? You can then pick your diamond from all these info.
The benefit of buying from a loose diamond retailer is that you get to choose the exact specifications of the diamond you are looking for. In those large outlets, the diamonds are already set on the ring, and you are often unable to choose the setting depending the diamond that you have chosen. My FH just listed out the specs of the diamond he was looking for and she managed to find it in her database, plus he was able to ‘customize’ it by choosing a setting he wanted. Btw, my FH chose a 4-claw setting as opposed to the classic 6-claw tiffany style setting as it kinda made the stone look bigger. Guys, remember to check out her ring size before going down to choose your setting!
Another benefit is also that we were personally attended to by Amanda and she is empowered to make decisions. Twice she waived off additional costs; First when we needed to resize the ring as my FH got my ring size wrong since he wanted to surprise me. And another time when we wanted to engrave a message on our wedding band. It was supposed to be only free for the first 5 characters, subsequent characters at additional cost. Our own special message had about 20 characters but, she was able to surprise us yet again and waive off the additional cost!
We had a very pleasant experience at Clarity and would recommend it to new buyers out there!