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.