I knew I wanted to propose. What I wasn’t confident about was choosing the ring.

My girlfriend is very particular about the things she wears. She doesn’t follow fashion for the sake of it and she doesn’t wear a huge amount of jewellery, but everything she does own seems to have been chosen for a reason.

Walking into a jewellery shop and picking a ring from a cabinet just didn’t feel right.

When I first spoke to Philip at De Vere Diamonds, I expected the conversation to be about carats and budgets. Instead, he asked me about her.

What jewellery did she already wear? Was she quite understated? What did she do for work? Did she wear yellow gold or platinum? Had she ever pointed out rings she liked? What did I want the ring to say about her?

I realised I had actually noticed far more than I thought.

We eventually chose a beautiful natural oval diamond and created the ring around it. I was involved in decisions I hadn’t even known existed before we started.

But one of the most important parts came towards the end, when Philip explained the Legacy Vault.

I recorded a video before I proposed.

I talked about why I had chosen her, how nervous I was, how I’d chosen the diamond and what I hoped our life together would become.

She didn’t know the video existed.

After she said yes, I showed it to her.

That was the moment the Legacy Vault stopped being something digital that accompanied the ring and became part of the engagement itself.

One day, if we have children, they’ll be able to see their dad before he proposed to their mum.

They won’t just inherit their mum’s ring.

They’ll know where their family began.