|
Dublin jeweler Paul Sheeran ensures his clients’ wedding proposals go down without a hitch.
Paul Sheeran, who has three jewelry stores in Dublin, believes Irish men easily rival the Italians when it comes to romance. “The Irish are probably the funniest and most romantic guys out there,” Sheeran says. “They just don’t need to boast about it. We had a guy who traveled half way across the world with a diamond in his jeans pocket so he could ask his girlfriend to marry him while they were camping at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
|
|
|---|
While Dublin has seen a growing concentration of multimillionaires over the past decade, Sheeran has encouraged many Irish to open their eyes to different styles of jewelry and watches at all price levels. Across his three shops, Sheeran sells diamond jewelry ranging from €500, or $795, to €200,000. With Tiffany, Bulgari and Cartier opening concessions in Dublin later this year, Sheeran’s rivals are now London, Paris, Dubai and Hong Kong. One of Sheeran’s specialities is helping to arrange romantic engagement proposals. “Every person remembers the magic of a proposal, whether it’s at the Guinness Tower in Dublin, the Empire State Building in New York or just walking down the street,” he says. “My favorite part of being a jeweler is being involved in that pivotal moment in people’s lives and making it fun.”
|
One of Sheeran’s clients had been waiting patiently for months for her boyfriend to propose. Finally, he presented her with a watch. “When she saw she was getting a watch, she was as good as ready to throw it back in his face,” remembers Sheeran. “But then she saw the engraving: Will you marry me?” At the moment, Paul Sheeran customers who buy a diamond cased Jaeger leCoultre with a secret engraving receive a night at Dublin’s five star Merrion Hotel thrown in. “It’s a great option for guys who don’t know which ring to buy,” Sheeran says. Sheeran and his staff deliver rings so men can avoid the hassle of transporting and concealing them from inquisitive girlfriends. To avoid suspicion, they often arrive at a restaurant or sneak into a hotel before the couple, carefully setting a ring on a tray and, in some cases, coaching waiters on their acting routines. “I recently met a customer at a quiet café on the Piazza San Marco in Venice while his girlfriend was at the spa,” he says. “It was such a joy seeing him with a smile on his face and a bead of sweat running down his head. I’d fly across the world for a customer.” “A diamond ring customer is a customer for life. We forget what profit we’re making from these kind of sales. It’s a relationship building exercise. For us, it’s genuine fun.”
The wedding pusher Paul Sheeran Jewellers, whose Grafton Street location is shown above, is one of Dublin’s best sources for engagement rings, like this diamond solitaire in platinum, because salespeople go out of their way to make sure the proposal is over-the-top romantic.
