Long Distance Stone and Ring Purchase

Hi everyone - I'm brand new here, but I've been appreciating all the helpful advice everyone gives. I've searched and searched for some help for two issues that I need to address, but I don't have a good solution, and I hope you can all help me out.

First, I am trying to buy a suitable engagement ring. I work in Italy, my SO lives in the USA. I need to do my diamond shopping and ring shopping long distance. I did a fair amount of searching while I was last in the states, and believe it or not, my preferred setting is coming from Shane Co. I appreciate a little bit of miligrain, a little bit of metalwork, but not too much, and not too dense. Here's the ring:

http://www.shaneco.com/Catalog/ProductDetail.aspx?O=AA&X=41015153

Of all the hundreds of settings I have reviewed, I haven't seen anything else like it. Here's the problem: it's obviously a mass-manufactured ring, so some of the fine details aren't to my liking because they just aren't of high enough quality. Can you recommend anywhere else to purchase such a setting? Honestly, I have found nothing similar.

Second, I also am trying to buy a suitable diamond. There's a 1.34 carat diamond at GOG that I can afford at just under $8k, but it is an I color diamond. On GOG's educational videos for color, he purposely mentions that in order to see color variation, the person wearing the ring must have alabaster skin or albino skin or something. Since my SO has darker skin (Indian background), should I not worry about the color at all? I am not particularly color sensitive personally, so I'm balancing that against the price and the skin tone issue in this purchase decision.

If I were in the states, I would just buy it, take a look, try it out, and send it back if necessary. But since I'm not located in the states, it's a lot riskier to be shipping diamonds around, and I want to avoid it.

So this is a two-part question...(a) do you have any thoughts on skin tone versus diamond color grade, (b) any other ideas on how best to deal with reviewing the diamond?

I'm working on a bit of a timeline here because she's coming to visit in November, and I want to make sure that the ring is in my hand when we're floating around the canals in Venice!