Where to try on in preparation for custom jewelry order

[imposterpockets]

I am planning on ordering rings custom from a jeweler who lives on the other side of the country from me. I have some ideas of how I would like the set to be, but I would like to test-drive some rings locally to see how they look on my hands and how they look in combination with one another. So, I went to the mall because that is the only place I could think of that has "fine" jewelry stores.

Ugh.

In addition to not being "fine" (it all felt like something out of a gumball machine) I couldn't actually try anything on properly. The store that I went into had samples of each kind of solitaire that they carried, but they only had them in one size. The size of my pinky. I wanted to test the solitaires stacked next to wider bands to see what width would look best on my hand. The only wide bands they carried were for men and they were all the size of my thumb. So, I could hold up a pinky sized solitaire next to a giant band and... imagine real hard?

Does anyone have suggestions for where to try on rings where they have more that ONE ring size?

I would like to see how something like this would look on my hand and what widths and stone sizes would look best. I know no where around here is going to have anything with a bezel, but if I could test out prong set stones I could get a general idea.

 

[imposterpockets]

Maybe I posted this in the wrong section of the forum to get help.

My plan at this point is to order an assortment of very cheap bands from Amazon in various widths (2mm, 4mm, 5mm, and 6mm) to compare different combinations. I think that a 2mm band for the solitaire would look nice with a 5mm plain band stacked next to it.

I found a printable gem size guide that I could cut things out of and tape them to the top of my cheap rings to see what stone size would look best with whatever combination of widths I choose.

Seems sort of silly that there are jewelry stores near me, but they do not carry more than one size in-store. Maybe Cincinnati is just weird.