GETTING IT TOGETHER

We finally got into the new office and there was a ton of work to get on with. My family had re renovated their businesses over the last 25 years and in those years they had collected what they like to call junk furniture, in my terms free stuff.

All the furniture and settings they had collected over the years was stored in moms factory, and after paying it a visit to see if I could use anything I nearly fell over at what I saw. It was like i was in IKEA from the 1980's and it had been all put into a room where god had picked up and shaken it up like a can of fresh juice.

After going through the whole heap of junk I got what I needed and as you say beggars cant be choosers, so I was not complaining. We were ready to start work but before that we had to conduct prayers at our office, another must if your Hindu.

I had always wanted my company to look professional and sound professional so to start up with we had designed our name cards, again without the help of any professionals, but we did get them printed from a professional company. Here is what they looked like and we were really happy.

Few other smaller things such as bank accounts, letter heads, taxation department and all the legal mambo jumbo. It was now November and we had our first 2 official clients talking to us about weddings in December. Thinking to myself should I take it??? Is it too soon??? I think back and I know I was just scared to take that step. In this industry it was you make it or break it in your first few weddings. Word of mouth is your main way of marketing and if you screw up even one time that's the end of your courier.

I am not saying that we don't make mistakes and yes everyone makes mistakes, but our motto here is how we clean them up, how do we follow up so it does not get out of hand.

So with these two weddings that I had finally decided to take on it was head down ass up and we were on our way.

SOMETHING I CALL MINE

I finally quit my job and was on my way to only GOD knows what.

I had around $ 30 thousand USD on my name to open up this new company that I wanted to call mine.

After years of working for other people slogging day and night making money for others my bank account finally determined on myself and how hard I worked. Just a small trip down memory lane.

2002- did my internship in a hotel in Geneva ( President Wilson ) 2003- Worked in the Hyatt Aryaduta in Jakarta 2004- Was a general manager for 4 Restaurants in Jakarta. 2005- Working with a wedding decorator in India ( Gurlean Manchanda ) 2006- Worked with Mind Share in the events department.

Around Mid November 2006 I decided this was the right time to get things on the road. I was all on my on, but not for long. Was on the look out for someone who would be on the same page as me, someone with the right vision.

I had met Vanessa Hutter and knew about her from Swiss where I studied and thought that we both pretty much have the same background in education and we got along. She was fresh out of University and ambitious. A few weeks before this she had called me and asked if I knew anyone from the hotel industry in Jakarta, foolishly without thinking I was like yea sure will introduce you to a few people. Finally I think something must have hit me on the head and thought to myself that she is the one, she would be the best person for the job.

Finally with someone by my side all we needed was an office something small and not expensive, but in a good location. When I found this office I thought I was set for success.

WRONG I was!!!! there is allot more that was involved with this business and getting it started than just moving into an office.

As allot of you might know registering a company in Indonesia might not seem that important again WRONG. In the industry that I am in it was really important that we get this company registered and recognised in this business world.

First thing we had to come up with was a name. Allot was flying around in the air the first that really stuck was "PASSIONS" and when we tried to register the company it had already been taken. For the next two to three weeks we kept on scratching our heads and thinking what would sound best and stick to people.

At the end like most original companies (yea right) we decided to use names in the family to try and come up with something. As some of you might not know at that very time my direct family was not so big it consisted of Innayat which is myself, and Nazneen which is my mother. So with not allot of letters to choose and not allot to play with it was time to throw on out thinking hats.

Thus was borne the name with which we are recognized and officially registered with.

INNAZ COMMUNIQUE

Being a very difficult person that was not enough for me, I said we got to attach a logo to this name. In case you don't remember the name you will remember the logo for sure. Had to be something that people will See and it will be embedded into their memory for the rest of their lives. I also wanted to represent something in my life, something that was about me. What would not be better than something that i might just have imprinted on myself and something that allot of people know is mine when they see my. With that I decided to use on of the tattoos that I had We put it ll together and we played with the colors. Like I said at the start we did not have allot of money to get all fancy and play with graphic artists and a logo specialist and all these what ever they want to call it in this new area business management world. So Vanessa and Myself put together what computer skills we had and finally came up with a company logo.

BEFORE THE BIG BANG

Before I could register my own company or even quit my Job I had my first wedding. It started during the Month of May 2006 when I had a family come up to me and say " I hear you worked for a decorator in India and we would like to get some Ideas and work with you. By now they had already chosen a wedding decorator so I knew they just wanted me to be a conceptor for this wedding they had planned. My first meeting was with the Father of the Bride and also their decorator. What they had wanted me to to was give them ideas for the decoration so that the other decorator could work with it. For me this was not not a way I wanted to put my foot into the market I wanted something bigger, I wanted something where people would know I am involved and I am in charge and this was my ideas. My next step was to let the family know that why don't they hire me as their wedding planner and with that I will make sure everything gets done without them having to worrying about too much. So my surprise they agreed and before I knew it I had my first Wedding to Plan. We started off with the decoration and straight away I knew this had to be big and had to be different, I wanted people to notice what we had done, I wanted jaws on the floor, I wanted people to say wow who has done this??? So far all weddings in Jakarta sort of look the same so you kind of know what to expect when you walk in. But I wanted people to get that shock when they see everything that OK this is something new. To start off with I came up with the idea to put the stage in the center of the hall instead of the normal layout of putting the stage along the back wall. I also wanted the stage to be round so that when anyone is on it the guest will be able to see from any angle. In other words there was no back side of the stage.

In the Indian tradition and like you see in the movies, there is allot of dancing involved. This does not stop there but also carries on into all kinds of celebrations. This was our main problem, the dancers would be facing one side of the hall but the guest would be located all around the stage. After having a much heated conversation with the choreographer they finally agreed to plan the dance so that attest one dancer would be facing each corner of the room. For the rest of the decoration I got allot of Inspiration from Preston Bailey Going through his books and his web site I did not want to copy what he had done but wanted to just get inspired with what I had seen and come up with something different. After all I was not the one who was going to put it together but it was just my vision. Finally it all came together with the decoration and now was D Day where everything had to be put together. We got the hall the the night before and had 17 hours to put everything together, and trust me we needed every second of it. By the time the hall was ready The rest of my team which was all of 3 people at the time had notified me that the Bride and the Groom had left their residence and were on their way to the ball room. We had just enough time to do all the sound and light check and to get the stage prepared for the priest to conduct the ceremony. On that day I happened to be the decorator who had not slept the whole night. The wedding planner who was going to be by the side of the bride and groom in case they needed anything, at the same time I was asked to be the Master of Ceremony and also the announcer for the speeches. I did it and I did it well. Everyone was impressed and the family was happy. The father of the bride even managed to slip in a few words to thank me for everything we had done.

THE START OF A NEW ERA

Here I was my Bride and Groom about to enter the hall, it felt like everything rested on my back. It was my first wedding!!!! How could they trust me with soo much??? Will i live up to their expectations???? These were the thoughts running through my head during my first Wedding.

It was held on the 9th of July 2006 and the client was actually a distant family member that meant more pressure cause all eyes were on me.

This whole idea was something new in the community something that no one had thought about maybe something that allot of people thought was ridiculous, and did not understand what I was getting into and thought that I was just wasting my time.

This was my motivation to prove to people and to myself that I would make this Idea of mine work and would put every bit of myself into this venture.