Custom Jewellery in Port Moody

Featured Port Moody work

“We’re a Port Moody couple from Newport Village. The bench access mattered — we kept tweaking the design and Vanhess made every revision in person.”

— Port Moody client (placeholder — replace with real testimonial)

What we make for Port Moody clients

Custom Engagement Rings

Designed around your stone, your story, your hand.

Custom Wedding Bands

Matched to any engagement ring, in any metal.

Custom Necklaces & Fine Jewellery

Pendants, earrings, and everyday pieces.

Heirloom Redesign

Give inherited stones and metal a new life.

Why Port Moody clients choose Vanhess

Newport Village and Suter Brook in PoMo have small-format independent retailers but no notable bespoke jeweller; the city’s arts-design crowd has historically gone to downtown Vancouver studios for custom work, with the appointment overhead and metered-parking friction that involves. Vanhess offers a closer, easier alternative: 10 minutes east on Barnet Highway, free covered parking, and a goldsmith on-site.

For proposal photography, Rocky Point Park’s pier at sunset is a Port Moody classic — we’ve designed engagement rings sized for “photographed against the inlet” shots more times than we can count. Buntzen Lake, just up the hill in Anmore, has the jade-green water and Coast Mountain backdrop that’s been called one of the Lower Mainland’s best wedding-photography locations. Brewers Row commissions tend to be more relaxed — an engagement that happens at a brewery rather than a vista — and we’ve made bands sized for those casual ceremonies too.

Practically, the Millennium Line is the easy way in. Two stops from Inlet Centre or Moody Centre to Coquitlam Central; we’re a 2-minute walk from the station entrance. Driving is also short — Barnet Highway east is 10–15 minutes from Newport Village, Suter Brook, or Heritage Mountain, with no significant rush-hour bottlenecks in either direction.

Custom engagement rings, architectural settings, and unusual stones

PoMo couples lean toward design-forward custom work: tension settings (the centre stone visually suspended between two metal arcs), bezel settings (the stone surrounded by a thin metal rim), low-profile architectural settings, hidden halos, cathedral settings, and one-off engineering challenges. We handle all of these at the bench. For couples who arrive with a hand sketch or a Pinterest board of saved references, we work back-and-forth to translate the visual idea into a buildable CAD model and a wax we can refine together.

On stones, PoMo clients have an above-average interest in coloured gemstones. We work with sapphire (any colour, including Padparadscha), morganite, aquamarine, emerald, ruby, tourmaline, alexandrite, opal, and Old Mine and Old European Cut diamonds. Sourcing a specific rare stone (Burmese ruby, Kashmir-style sapphire, Paraiba tourmaline) typically takes 4–12 weeks — we quote lead time at consultation.

For diamond engagement rings, the lab-grown vs natural conversation has shifted dramatically. The Knot 2024 study (via Rapaport) reports 52% of US engagement rings sold in 2024 had a lab-grown centre stone. Pricing is the driver: Edahn Golan’s diamond analytics shows the average price of a 1ct lab-grown fell from $3,410 (Jan 2020) to $892 (Dec 2024). For arts-design-conscious PoMo clients, lab-grown often unlocks a larger or more interesting cut at the same budget; natural is preferred when long-term value or pairing with heirloom contexts matters.

For diamond grading, the GIA 4Cs primer is the global standard. GIA Report Check verifies any GIA-graded stone by report number.

Heirloom redesign and Korean wedding jewellery

Heirloom redesign is a regular request from PoMo clients. Common redesigns: turning a parent’s 1980s-era cluster ring into a modern bezel-set solitaire, melting inherited 14K or 18K gold into a pair of architectural wedding bands, or resetting heirloom stones into a pendant when the original ring has fallen out of style.

For Korean-Canadian couples, we’ve made paebaek-day pieces (traditional ceremony jewellery worn after the Western-style wedding), modern engagement rings paired with traditional Korean gold pieces brought from Korea, and full Western-Korean wedding sets. We work in 24K, 22K, 18K, and 14K and can incorporate inherited Korean gold into new designs.

The broader heirloom-redesign trend is documented. An AP-wire feature noted that a growing share of couples are choosing to redesign heirloom rings rather than buy new. Material trends back it: the World Gold Council’s 2024 report shows recycled gold supply at 27.5% of total global supply — the highest share since 2012. Natural diamonds we source come through the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which covers approximately 99.8% of the world’s rough diamond trade.

Pricing, timelines, and what to expect

Custom engagement rings: 4–6 weeks for available stones; 8–14 weeks for rare-stone commissions where sourcing is the gating step. Wedding band matching: 3–4 weeks. Heirloom redesigns: 3–6 weeks. PoMo couples should start the consultation 3 months ahead for engagement rings, 2 months for bands.

Most of our custom engagement rings fall between CAD $2,500 and $4,500, with lab-grown solitaires from $1,500 and rare-coloured-stone commissions running higher. Wedding bands $600–$1,800 in 14K or 18K. The Knot 2024 study puts the US average ring spend at about $5,200 USD; Canadian budgets typically similar after conversion. For wedding cost context, MoneySense puts the average Canadian wedding at approximately $29,450 in 2024.

Once delivered, professional inspection every 6 months for daily-wear rings is the industry guideline per Jewelers Mutual. Reappraisal every two years is the recommendation per Jewelers Mutual. We provide both as part of every commission.

Common questions from Port Moody clients

Getting to our Coquitlam studio from Port Moody

By car: Barnet Highway east — 10–15 minutes from Newport Village, Suter Brook, Heritage Mountain, or Heritage Woods. Free covered parking at Coquitlam Centre.

By SkyTrain: Millennium Line from Moody Centre or Inlet Centre — 2 stops to Coquitlam Central, then a 2-minute walk to our store inside Coquitlam Centre.

By bus: Multiple TransLink routes connect PoMo neighbourhoods to Coquitlam Central via Barnet Highway corridors.

Port Moody neighbourhoods we work with regularly: Newport Village, Suter Brook, Klahanie, Heritage Mountain, Heritage Woods, College Park, Glenayre, Pleasantside, Belcarra (just outside city limits), Anmore (Buntzen Lake area), Ioco, Mountain Meadows.