Ames Silversmithing is awesome. I lived in NYC and still bought our rings from them. Top notch customer service.
Here's my Advice:
#1. Don't waste your money on an overly clear, perfect diamond. The most important things are the cut, color and the size. Don't look at the diamonds under the magnifying glass. Look at them very closely with your naked eye. Inclusions, clouds, etc that you can see are usually pretty rare. The most important thing is how much it will sparkle in the light, which is typically dependent on the cut, the color and how big it is. You can save a boatload doing this. Also, if you can swing it, get platinum, but you can save a ton of money if you use white gold instead and it looks essentially the same. No one really cares, they are usually staring at the diamond.
#2. If you are really caught up in the ratings, then buy from bluediamond.com. I ordered a diamond from them that put every diamond I went and looked at in Jewelry stores to shame, and it typically cost a lot less than worse diamonds. That being said, I ended up returning it as I didn't have a boatload of savings to pay it off right away. Ames Silversmithing gave me zero percent financing for 18 months that I couldn't pass up. This way, the rings were paid for in 18 months, rather than 3 years with interest.
#3. Don't forget about the wedding band. These things are going to be worn together in most cases, so they need to work together. I did a fully custom set of rings from Ames Silversmithing. I actually modeled the rings in a 3d program (I'm familiar with numerous programs from work) and sent the file to them to be 3d printed in wax. They send you the wax mold to make sure it looks good, and then they make the ring (the wax get's melted when the cast the ring in the mold).
#4. Unless you're going vintage, keep the ring simple. The ring should be clean with little or better, no ornamentation. The star of the show is the diamond. If the ring gets too designed, it will both overwhelm the diamond, and date the ring. Simple is timeless. The solitaire settings look good forever. Get a bigger/better diamond now in a simple cheaper setting. You can always upgrade the setting later, but believe me, you only want to buy the diamond once. That being said, make sure you get a high quality setting for the diamond. You don't want that baby getting out of there. (this is where platinum posts might be a good idea).
#5. Stop buying jewelry after this... (that's my own thing, do what you want.
There are a lot of places my money will go instead of jewelry. We did the rings all out, but I told my wife specifically that it would be the last piece of jewelry I ever gave her... You gotta set boundaries early!)
