The Bee & Mine Honeycomb took nine days to design and about six weeks to name. The sculpture was finished before we had a name we liked. This is normal.
What we're actually trying to do
A collection name has three jobs. It has to make sense the first time you read it. It has to feel like something a person you'd trust would say out loud. And it has to leave room — because a name that's too clever now will feel dated in two years.
The Bee & Mine name came from a note a customer sent us. She was ordering an engagement gift for her partner, and in the personalization notes she wrote: "will you bee mine? — engrave this if you can." We didn't end up engraving it (too long for the base), but the phrase stayed in a text file on my desktop for months. When the honeycomb sculpture was ready to launch, I dug it back out.
The names we rejected
For the same sculpture: "Honeycomb Vows." "The Bee Pair." "Sweet Union." "Hive Heart." Every one of these was on a whiteboard for at least a day. None of them felt right. "Honeycomb Vows" was too formal. "Sweet Union" sounded like a Hallmark card. "Hive Heart" felt like a startup.
The First Dance Couple was similar. Early candidates: "The Dance," "Waltz Sculpture," "Our First Song," "One Dance." The final name is the shortest and most obvious of the bunch, which usually turns out to be right.
Why the names all sound a bit similar
By design. Cloud Tree Couple, Bear Couple Shelf, Love Birds Sculpture, First Dance Couple, Bee & Mine Honeycomb. They all use short, familiar words. They all describe the physical object plainly. None of them try to be poetic on their own — the poetry comes from the piece itself and the two names you engrave into it.
The customer's names — MICHAEL & SARAH, OLIVIA & DANIEL, EMMA & JAMES — do the emotional work. Our job is to name the object so plainly that yours is the only story on it.