Weddingbee Blog

I’ve gotten some lovely comments about our wedding “monogram” on posts in which I’ve used it. I think it’s about time that I give credit where it’s due and share the sources of inspiration for the design that I put on the corn hole boards and ring bearer flags that we’ll be using at our wedding.

Photo by Miss Mink

Some of you probably recognized the bottom of the design right away. I took that from a free, downloadable design that’s available on The Wedding Chicks website. The colors weren’t quite right for our wedding’s color scheme, but that wasn’t a major concern. I loved the banner and the flowers on either side of it.

Image from The Wedding Chicks

This wasn’t the direction in which I originally went, though. I initially wanted to use the exactly same design that is on our wedding invitations on all of these items. I wrote to Alethea and Ruth, who created the invitation design, to ask for permission. Rachel Simonson, half of the Alethea and Ruth team, quickly replied that she was flattered that I liked her work and was fine with my using it elsewhere, but she unfortunately didn’t own the rights to it anymore. Her designs are offered through Minted.com and they owned it. I had had wonderful interactions with Minted while ordering our invitations, so I emailed them to explain what I wanted to do. A few people told me this was silly, that Minted wouldn’t care if I lifted a design to use on something they don’t even sell, but I wanted to be a good blogger and make sure I had their blessing.

Well, I never got a reply to my email. Figuring they were pretty busy folks, I emailed Minted again. I never heard back. I have since had still more wonderful interactions with Minted staff, so I’m still a big fan of the company. However, during the wait for a response to a third email, I got nervous and started to look for alternatives. That’s how I arrived at The Wedding Chicks design.

The design on The Wedding Chicks was nice, but I wanted a more substantial wreath of flowers around our monogram. I found almost exactly what I wanted on a Minted blog post about Alethea and Ruth’s creative process.

Image from Minted.com’s blog

If those sketches came out of your fingers, wouldn’t you be thrilled? The floral wreath at the bottom of the sketch pictures on the post was calling my name! It was far too ornate for me to copy with my limited abilities, but I went through the sketches and the final designs and selected a few flowers here and there.

Love! / Image from Minted.com’s blog

With some great inspiration, I was able to come up with an image to use in my DIY projects, thanks to The Wedding Chicks and the team at Alethea and Ruth.

What were your favorite places to find inspiration for your DIY projects?