World-renowned jewelry broker, designer delivers proposal advice

Galatea Berger has a unique set of methods: a resourceful intellect, an eye for splendor and an in depth record of world diamond cutters and brokers on pace dial.

She’s served many gentlemen structure engagement rings for the loves of their lives — and she’s observed their faces modify color when they consider about what is following. At that point, they’re so happy, but they also know the gravity of the next step, she reported. “And I’m in that minute with them.”

“What will make me different is that I hear,” she stated.

She listens to what her purchasers want — and she doesn’t want to provide them just about anything that isn’t the ring of their goals, Berger reported. That contains aspects like the wearer’s preferences and if she has a occupation exactly where she might be pulling gloves on and off.

But Berger also listens to what is on the men’s minds.

“I’m a section of their journey,” she reported. “I enjoy individuals, and I really like their tales. I usually talk to them how they achieved. It is intriguing what they say about how they understood she was the 1 — to hear their tales, it is just the sweetest point.”

About the several years due to the fact she commenced Galatea Styles, she’s aided several adult men not only obtain rings but also strategy their engagements.

“I usually request how they strategy to request her,” she claimed. “I convey to them, ‘People are likely to check with her how you did it, so you have to set your heart out there. Generate a poem. Do a little something specific.’”

Occasionally their talks halt there. But usually Berger finds herself slipping into a life mentor role as consumers open up up and share about their life.

She reported she remembered a person male who came in to decide out a ring and was anxious for a selection of factors. He said he would give relationship a year and see if it worked.

“I mentioned, ‘Well then, you should not get married,’” Berger claimed. “‘You have to put your heart on the desk if it is not for existence, you never want to go there.’”

She mentioned the guy went back and experienced a susceptible, emotional dialogue with his before long-to-be fiancée about their romance and their long term, then arrived back and told Berger they have been now closer than they’d ever been. 

“If he experienced just bought the ring and left, that wouldn’t have occurred,” she mentioned. “That aspect of it is not my task, but it is my position at the identical time.”

And as a final result, Berger finds herself wrapped up in the tales of these partners. She ends up at lots of of the weddings, frequently sitting with the relatives.

“I’ve been really fortunate that men and women trust me,” she mentioned.

Berger’s perform began in the 1980s soon after she graduated with a diploma in art and was doing the job as a financial institution teller and developing jewellery, or “wearable jeweled art,” on the aspect. Soon clients ended up dropping in just to see what new styles she was carrying that day.

“I didn’t like quantities, but I liked the individuals,” she claimed.

Not much too long right after that, Berger’s Mountain Brook-based mostly organization was born. 

“My friendships from the bank turned my consumers,” she explained.

Over the many years, Galatea Layouts has developed and received recognition from Alabama to Europe. She has built pieces for a Spain-based company, and she has built a commemorative ring for the University of Alabama. She specializes in procuring diamonds licensed by the Gemological Institute of The usa and the European Gemological Laboratory.

Though Berger does develop other parts, she mainly styles engagement rings. One particular customer, Chris McAlpine, arrived all the way from Arkansas to have a ring built soon after good friends advised Berger.

“The service and high quality of personalization that Galatea gave us was astounding,” McAlpine stated, noting that his now-wife is ecstatic with the ring. 

Berger did “an extraordinary task,” he reported. “She built the working experience more about me and what my wife’s desires had been, opposed to what she [Berger] needed.”

For Berger, that’s what it’s all about — getting a section of a couple’s personal tale and aiding to see it via. It’s a life’s do the job that fits her personality and her name.

“You may possibly remember the Greek fantasy of Pygmalion, a mortal who sculpted a statue so beautiful that he fell in really like with it,” she writes on her site. “Aphrodite, the goddess of attractiveness and appreciate, took pity on the lovesick artist, and introduced to lifestyle the beautiful sculpture, which was named Galatea.”

So Galatea Designs, while naturally named for Berger, also brings up inner thoughts of “striking visible appeal” and “man’s like for lady,” she wrote.

Her enterprise brand, a female with a diamond in her hand, is also meaningful to Berger.

“She’s moving ahead she’s like a person of energy,” Berger reported. “Her hand is extended and her palm is up, which indicates she’s receptive. Most of the items I have or do have a meaning.”

She jokes that her customers should really be watchful not to slide in really like with the jewellery — to conserve that for the female in their lifestyle who will be carrying it.

“I convey to them, when you uncover that particular person you definitely really like, you treasure that,” Berger reported. “Not only is it an honor, it’s also a duty. Out of all the folks in the environment, she reported ‘yes’ to you. Now you have obtained to phase up.”

The purpose of Galatea Types, she claimed, is “to give everyday living to a idea.”

Galatea Models is located at 6 Business office Park Circle in Mountain Brook. For far more information and facts, stop by galateadesigns.com or comply with Galatea Models on Instagram @galateadesigns.