diamond news and views
Katie,
The bands are over the top fantastic. I am certain that they will get worn often. Thank you so much for getting them to me so far ahead of schedule, that was an extra treat! As I am sure you know I will be back for more in the future!
Many Thanks, Katherine
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Katie, This has been sitting in my email as a draft since February 15th! WOW, I am extremely sorry I never got back to you in 7 months! I don’t know what else to say except that I am sorry. Time has just flown by on me, but it’s not an excuse. Well, here is the long awaited engagement story:
Maria and I got engaged on February 12, 2008. The ring was/is beautiful!!! I don’t know how I waited the few months to propose after I received the ring from Whiteflash, but I did it! My plans went perfectly. It was a snowy February night. Since it was our 3 years together, we planned a romantic night out. Since I had the Jeep Wrangler, snow was not a problem. I kept everything a surprise, so Maria didn’t know where we were going. First, we went to a nice Spanish restaurant for a romantic meal. Afterwards, I drove to Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange, NJ which is where Maria and I had one of our first dates. This has a view of the NYC skyline in the distance. Very beautiful! Since it was our 3 years together, I got her a card and a gift. The night was going great and everything was perfect. We then walked while gazing at the NYC skyline, snow falling, holding hands. I turned to her and told her that I loved her and that I had one more gift for her. As I reached into my pocket, her eyes opened wide and she had “the look” on her face. I pulled out a single rose and handed it to her. Suddenly, she seemed somewhat relieved. I asked her if she remembered our first date. She told me that of course she did, I had given her a single red rose. She smelled the rose and mentioned how beautiful it was. I then told her that the rose was a “one-of-a-kind.” She stared at it for a few more seconds, twisting it through her fingers. Suddenly her mouth dropped and she muttered “Oh my…” I knelt on one knee in the snow, her holding her hand over her mouth, and proposed to her. Of course she said “YES!” It was a perfect night.
I want to thank you for all of your help and I want to thank all of Whiteflash. The ring is gorgeous and I wouldn’t change it for the world! Maria loves it!!!
Thank you!
Katie, Hi! How have you been? Hope all is well with you too.I was just thinking about you a few days ago! I was going to contact you regarding designing and ordering our wedding bands. Thank you so much for thinking of me first! =o) I apologize for not keeping in touch. Life has been a little crazy. I started my residency 2 months ago and still trying to adjust to the crazy schedule. I’m living in Philadelphia right now for this residency. The wedding is set for March 22, 2009. It’s only 6 months away! I can’t believe he proposed almost a year ago! Then ring is AMAZING! I absolutely love it. The production team did a spectacular job. Please thank them for me. ~Kellee
Our Whiteflash customers Maria and Jeffrey had a BEAUTIFUL wedding, as you can see by these pictures! Happy Brides and Happy Grooms….. makes us all smile! We can’t help but notice the BRIGHT SPARKLE coming off the Whiteflash Diamond Ring on Maria’s finger! All our best wishes and congratulations.
Katie, I just picked up my ring, and will stop staring at it just long enough to tell you how beautiful it looks. Just perfect, it is even nicer than the pictures I got last night. My diamond looks terrific in this setting, so much whiter and brighter than before, and it sits low enough that I can wear it all the time. It has so much sparkle that I hardly recognize it. I think Whiteflash is turning the concept of a “local family jeweler” into an anachronism. The whole process, from design through delivery, has been a pleasure. My initial reluctance about the doing this through the mail has been overcome by the wonderful service and communication that you and your team have provided along the way. Of course this also applies to the engagement ring that you helped my nephew Ben purchase recently. I appreciated that you were able to make him a stunning ring at a great price, and on short notice besides. It is no wonder that your company, and you personally, have received such kudos on Pricescope. They are surely all well deserved. Thank you Katie, and expect to hear from me again and again.
Thank you, Katie and Whiteflash, for your great customer service. You helped us choose such an amazing diamond. I love how it faces up so white and is super sparkly. WF did an awesome job on my custom wedding band too! My rings are definitely my dream set. Thank you! The wedding was everything we wanted it to be. Now we are just working and trying to get into shape for Hawaii for my sisters wedding in a few months. I attached some pics for you. One of my bridesmaids, Irene, also got her ring from WF! Anyways, I hope you are well! Annie
One of our Whiteflash “Family Members” is getting a new member in her own family! Katie writes:
We will be welcoming Kasier to our family on 07/28. He is the most adorable thing I’ve seen and so very sweet!! My husband and I went and looked at him this past weekend and fell in love!! They were all so hard to resist but Kaiser stole our hearts away. This picture of the little guy will show you why!!
Hi, Katie-
I don’t think I ever updated you on the results of the ring purchase. First of all, I was extremely satisfied with the diamond. It was beautiful and a great price, too. Can’t complain. I think if I could do it all over again, I’d get a different band, though. I mean, she likes the tiffany setting, but it is just so common… but where it got difficult for me is that if I would have purchased something else, she may not have liked it- and my philosophy is that you cant go wrong with the tiffany setting! I had the ring for about a month before I asked her. We went to Morro Bay in California… there is a ledge that takes you out to the Ocean and we were the only ones out there. It was pretty nice. I didn’t really plan it but I had been carrying the ring around. I thought it wouldn’t really get nicer than that- so I asked her there. Of course, she said yes and we are planning on getting married some time next Spring (our work schedules wont allow us to get married earlier!). Thanks for everything.
Dear Katie, I picked up the ring 2 days ago, and was away since. The ring and diamond looks excellent, there is nothing that i could fault at all!!! I have had a chance to take it for an inspection at DCLA, they are a Certified Diamond Laboratory in Sydney, for a confirmation of the stone as to the AGS certificate, their verdict was that the stone is as per certificate, they could not test the color as it was already set. They also were familiar with White Flash, and I’ve been told that they are yet to see a stone from WF that does not coincide with the certificate. All in all everyone who has seen the ring has been very impressed to say the least, me included. Thank you very much for everything, and I will have no hesitations to recommend your work to anybody and also contact you myself should I be in the market! Regards, Dmitry
Katie - I still love my ring. I have attached a picture, although it really dosn’t do it justice. I have had people stop me in stores to admire it though and I don’t hesitate to tell them about Whiteflash. Thanks for your help.
Amazing!! Not only can you have your pet buried at a cemetery with a head stone or cremated, you can now make him/her into a diamond!!
From: TMZ If dogs are man’s best friend and diamonds are a girl’s best friend, it would make perfect sense to mix the two and turn your dead dog into a diamond, right? If you’re KimHorror Lee Simmons it would. The diva turned designer is mourning the recent loss of her beloved dog, Zoe and has told People she is considering turning the pet into some bling. “There is a company that makes diamonds out of your loved ones,” she said. “[They] make diamonds from a little of the carbon from the ash, so I might do that. I might turn her into a diamond.” The company Kimora is talking about is called Lifegem. Their website boasts, amongst other gems, a letter to the CEO’s deceased pet. In it he states that while nothing can ever replace that special bond, morphing your dog into a diamond may “provide comfort through an everlasting connection and closeness.”
Nothing like remembering that time CoCo peed on the couch — than by wearing him as a ring on your finger
Farve retiring?? How sad!! He will be missed! I guess when it’s time to go, the best way to do so is with a record like his!
From: Yahoosports He has had one of the greatest careers in the history of the National Football League, and he is able to walk away from the game on his own terms— not many players are able to do that,” Packers general manager Ted Thompson said Tuesday. Favre’s agent Bus Cook said the 38-year-old quarterback told him of his decision Monday night. “Nobody pushed Bret Favre out the door, but then nobody encouraged him not to go out that door, either,” Cook said by phone from his Hattiesburg, Miss., office.
FOX Sports first reported Tuesday that the three-time MVP planned to retire.
Associated Press Writer Ron Harris in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.
A beautiful wedding, a beautiful couple and now……a beautiful baby - Welcome Baby Drew!
Another happy engaged couple! Jerry popped the question to Julie….and well, see it for yourself. In Jerry’s words;
Video of my engagement to Julie this weekend….
a bit cheesy but give a guy a break
Katie - i told her i was taking her somewhere secret and overnight for our 11 monthiversary - we got stuff for a picnic and i gave her a huge bouquet of beautiful flowers, then we drove to Julian listening to a mix of our favorite romantic and sentimental songs, and got her favorite pie, and went to eat our picnic at this amazing bed and breakfast that has a “gnome home” that we’d stayed in before (like a hollowed out tree stump - super cool!). as we were eating, a plane started writing overhead “MMA!” which only she would know would stand for “marry me already!” and when she realized what it was doing i got on my knee and gave her her lovely ring (thanks Katie!!!!) and asked her to marry me. she said yes 
we spent the night in our gnome home with a bottle of champagne and it was just right! hurrah! she loves her ring and i love seeing it on her beautiful hand! - Rafter & Lizeth, CA
Here are pictures of my clients Jack and Hanna from Oklahoma. The photos are from their trip to Washington. Plenty more here. What a beautiful couple!
Katie - On Saturday morning Hope and I drove out to Lake Somerville (near Brenham) and rented a canoe. About a year and a half ago we had visited the island in the middle to find a geocache hidden there. Geocaches are boxes that people hide and then post the latitude and longitude of the cache on a web site so that other people can find them. It is sort of a treasure hunt for anyone with a GPS unit. Not quite as fun as taking a sighting across a dead man’s bones and them walking thirty paces like in Treasure Island, but its the same idea. The objective here isn’t the treasure but the challenge of finding it (normally).
On Friday night I told Hope that I thought it might be fun to go out to Lake Somerville since the weather would be nice. Additionally I told her that a new geocache had been placed on the Island and it might be fun to find it. (more…)
I can’t believe this! Another find at the park…700+ this year! That’s it, who’s coming with me?
From Yahoo -A Wisconsin man digging at an Arkansas diamond park with his fiancee Tuesday found a 3.92-carat white stone, but the rock will go into his collection because his betrothed already has a ring and a setting. Eric Blake, 32, of Appleton, Wis., spotted the stone along a trail at the Crater of Diamonds State Park when he set down a 70-pound bucket of mud that he was carrying to a wash basin. “I put the bucket down to switch hands. I looked down and there it was,” Blake said. Blake found a 1.49-carat stone Monday. The larger one is big enough to fashion into jewelry but Blake hadn’t decided whether he will have it placed into a setting. “I only found it an hour ago,” he said. Blake, a carpenter, said his grandfather had taken him to the state park about 15 years ago and that he returns two to three times a year. “We usually find something,” he said. His fiancee Susan Gabrielson — who has “only one carat on her finger” — her daughter Sayde and Susan’s sister Sarah accompanied Blake to the park this week. Susan found a 1.47-carat stone and some smaller gems Monday. “We’re going back out today. We’ll take a lunch and then go back into the field,” Blake said. More than 700 diamonds have been found at the park this year. The Crater of Diamonds park is the world’s only diamond-producing site open to the public and visitors can keep the stones they dig up. The largest diamond ever found in the United States, the 40-carat white diamond named Uncle Sam, was unearthed in 1924 at the Murfreesboro park.
Oh my gosh. Can anyone say “swooon!?” As we all know it’s so hard to find well cut fancies in large sizes, especially with such an attractive shape. Lauren’s diamond is (brace yourself) 3.26 carats of sparkling joy! It’s incredible how white and clean it faces in this monster size. Just…wow. Luckily she’s local so I will convince her to bring it back for cleaning so we can ogle it. Lauren is helping prove everything is bigger in Texas!
Katie - As you may have guessed Katie and I are now officially engaged, she said “yes.” I decided to get a really nice room in downtown SF and then decorate the room with tons of flowers and candles. Since she was arriving in Friday night I had plenty of time to prepare the room without her knowing. In any event I was very careful to give her no indication of my plans and I even told her I was not feeling well when I picked her up at the airport. When she walked into the hotel room and saw everything she was caught totally off-guard. The rest is history. We would spend the weekend visiting a couple wineries in Napa, dining at one of the best restaurants on the planet, and having brunch aboard a boat while watching the Blue Angels perform over SF. She was more than happy with the ring… I think the word was “cloud nine.” - David & Katie, AZ
We got engaged!!! We got to Napa late Friday night after work for a belated V-day celebration, and despite the fact that Jonathan had told me he’d booked the Quality Inn, he completely surprised me with a gorgeous room in a beautiful little inn. Our room was soooo nice, with huge windows that overlook a picture-perfect creek that runs alongside the back of the inn. When we walked in, there were the usual little boxed chocolates on the bed, along with an origami container. I opened the origami and found two little metal squares with a picture of spaghetti on one and coffee on the other… That’s odd, I thought. Probably some gimmick to get you to come back to the hotel and collect more of these little trinkets? I put them away for souvenirs, and didn’t think anything more of it.
What a fun couple! Danny was so creative and his proposal story is just…amazing!!! You can read the whole amazing thing here (where Danny also posted a cool slide show of the ring from design to finish). This is Shelley’s version…
Danny proposed on September 8th. He took me flying! He wore his pilot dress shirt and tie, and I wore a pretty blue dress. It was a cloudy morning but it cleared up beautifully. We flew in a little plane through the mountains, over Canmore. Wow. What a perpective! He took me over my house and asked me what I saw. There on the road were huge 3-4 foot letters, WUMMS? “What do you think it means?”, he asked. “Will You Marry Me Shelley!!!” I screamed. He handed me an open box and I screamed and laughed some more. He leaned over to kiss me with his hands on the controls. Then he reminded me that it was a question. “YES!” He did a bunch of crazy turns that kept me screaming and stomping my feet on the floor of the plane… (read the rest) - Shelley & Danny, Canada
Hi Katie - Hope you are doing well and enjoying your summer. Kim still catches herself staring at her new ring every day and absolutely loves it! Her folks visited recently and loved it as well! She’s been telling her friends about Whiteflash and we’ll definitely pass your name along to friends who may be looking in the future. Thank you again Katie for all your helpfulness and being patient with me as I went through the purchase process…it was a little intimidating spending that much online, but WF and yourself made the experience really smooth, comfortable, and we are both very very happy with the end result! – Lawrence & Kim, CA
The State fair is right around the corner and I can’t wait!! It is held in Dallas and starts September 28th and runs through mid October. If you like to see different shows, eat lots of unhealthy food and see all the new cars for the coming year, you should visit the fair. It is really a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it! Here is an article I found on the fried foods. Enjoy
