Wedding Industry Freelance Contract Over Reach. Do They Have The Right?!

Location: Texas. I have been doing freelance for an hourly rate for very small wedding planning company for about a year now as a “design specialist.” This has included full design decks for clients, invitation suites, day-of stationery, back end Q&As, educational PDFs for clients, and a lot more. Things have gone sideways and the scope bloat just got out of control for what I am able to handle. So I informed them that I will be finishing up the latest projects and won’t be taking on any more.

This is where things got messy and a little intense. Originally in the NDA I signed (extremely basic) it is just protecting their confidential information like client names, etc and says nothing about ownership over anything I created.

Now they are coming back and saying that everything is their property, including any catalogs, templates, and anything else “we worked on,” and is requiring a file folder of every finished item I completed for clients. Even saying that they could request editable files. Also that I can’t use any photographer images, event images, or client-facing files for portfolio, website, or marketing. Which is not in our contract or NDA at all.

I have so many questions and I feel like this is a huge overreach. I’m kicking myself for not protecting myself from the beginning…you live and learn though. I just want to know how to stand up for myself and my work. Some people tell me to just walk away and leave it, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.

So I guess my questions are:

• Just because they say this now doesn’t mean anything against our original signed contracts? Like prohibiting portfolio usage?

• As a freelancer, do I retain rights to working files like templates? Even if they have access to them. Them mainly pertains to design decks. Not anything else.

• Do clients have ownership over things like invitations and day-of signage vs the company? I was client facing and from start to finish I designed, presented, fabricated, and delivered these.