We didn’t set out to start a jewelry company.

We started with hello.

Forty-six days after meeting, we were married. And in a lot of ways, we did everything backwards.

We got married with simple wedding bands. Later, we went together and chose our real wedding bands and had them engraved with words that already belonged to us.

Inside my ring: Para Siempre — forever.

Inside Adan’s ring: Corazón y Alma — heart and soul.

Those weren’t words we chose because they sounded beautiful. They were already part of the way Adan spoke to me every day — mi corazón, mi alma, para siempre.

And after all of that came the engagement ring...

Seven weeks after our wedding, I traveled to Colombia to meet Adan’s family. Although he couldn’t take me home himself, he found another way to share Colombia with me.

From thousands of miles away, he connected me with the people he loves and arranged an afternoon with an emerald dealer in Bogotá.

That afternoon, I chose the natural Colombian emerald that would become the engagement ring we never had at the beginning.

We weren’t thinking about inventory. We weren’t thinking about a business.

We were simply building our life together.

But somewhere in that experience, an idea began to grow.

What if we could help other people discover Colombian emeralds in the same personal way — through relationships, conversation, and a genuine connection to the people and places behind the stones?

What if finding a stone could feel less like shopping and more like finding the beginning of a story?

That idea became Collante & Co.

We chose the name Collante because the deeper story of Colombia behind this company begins with Adan’s mother and her family — with Saldaña, the countryside, the land, and the part of Colombia that has shaped so much of who he is. In many ways, this company carries a piece of that legacy forward.

Today, through our trusted network of emerald dealers and sourcing partners in Bogotá, we privately source natural Colombian emeralds for clients in the United States. We help you explore available stones, choose the one that feels right, and guide its journey from Colombia to you.

And as Collante & Co. grows, so will the ways those stones become part of people’s lives - loose emeralds chosen simply because someone loves them, select finished pieces, engagement rings, meaningful gifts, and custom jewelry created around stones sourced through us.

Para Siempre is still part of our story. It always will be. It just lives where it began — inside the ring that came before the company.

Because for us, the jewelry didn’t create the story.

The story created the jewelry.