SAFINAZ Yusof is a born wedding planner. It is a passion and skill that she has inherited from the women in her family.
"Whenever there was a wedding in our hometown in Chenor, Pahang, people sought my mum's services to handle the intricacies of hantaran and bridal room decoration, for example.
"My grandmother did the same when she was younger. You can say it runs in the family."
But wedding planner was not what Shafinaz, 35, picked for as a career when she was growing up.
An accounting graduate of Institut Perdagangan MARA, she held a steady job in an oil and gas multinational company for eight years before she quit to do wedding and events planning full time.
"It was a gamble but my passion proved too strong. And if the Internet and services such as Flickr, Blogger and Facebook were not available for free, I would not have been able to start up my business as quickly or economically as I did."
The boss of events planning company Maya Puri Creations, Safinaz believes fairy-tale weddings require creativity, hard work and a dash of technology to pull everything together.
Then and now
Safinaz observes that, apart from keeping true to traditions, wedding planning during her mother's and grandmother's days was vastly different. Weddings of yesteryears were simpler and less fussy. They were more about giving a good feast through gotong-royong, exchanging hantaran (gifts) and dowry between the bride and groom, and the gathering of friends, relatives and well-wishers.
Nowadays, couples worry about the venue, invitation cards, deejays and master of ceremony, photography and videography, make-up and attire.
"Each couple is unique, each has its own tastes, personality, preferences and requirements. They also have their family's wishes to respect. What I do is get to know them, find out what they need and help make their dream wedding a reality without treading on anyone's toes.
"For each wedding, I try to find that delicate balance," says Safinaz.
Unlike many other wedding planning companies, Maya Puri Creations does not offer packages. "Today, customers are tech-savvy. They know what they want and they start by Googling for information. That's why I do not offer packages in case they want a particular service such as photography or the invitations card to be done by someone else other than my network of service providers.
"I want them to have everything they wish for and will not limit their options by tying them down to a package."
Safinaz also makes wedding favours by hand, designs and builds the dais from scratch, writes specialised invitation cards and thank-you tags, and arranges fresh flowers for the guest and bridal tables. She even helps the family decorate the house to suit the wedding theme.
She networks with caterers, bakers, photographers, videographers, make-up artistes, bridal boutiques, printing companies, suppliers and other business owners within the industry to deliver a full-fledged wedding planning service upon request.
Marketing channel
When she launched Maya Puri Creations a few years ago, Safinaz invested not only in computing hardware and a digital SLR camera, but she also spent time learning to leverage on the Internet for her business to grow.
"I attended an event organised by 1Nita in which Internet millionaire Irfan Khairi was one of the guest speakers. He was generous with tips and after his 45-minute talk, I learnt to make sure my blog and Flickr pages ranked higher by search engines. Now, I also subscribe to his email and I find his input helpful and motivational."
Knowing that she needs to send the word out about her services, Safinaz started Maya Puri Creations.
There are creations blog at mayapuri.blogspot.com to disseminate details of her business as well as a Flickr Pro account to house a picture gallery of her previous projects. "I also started a Facebook account, but back then it wasn't very user-friendly and not too many Malaysians registered at the site.
"Today, Facebook is one of my main promotional channels. I've recently set up a Page," says Safinaz. Currently more than 900 Facebook users have signed up with Maya Puri Creations' Facebook Like Page.
Safinaz feels she has saved a lot of money with the help of technology. "I use as much free Internet services as I can to market my company. The Pro account with Flickr and domain yearly fees only add up to several hundred ringgit annually, which is value-for-money considering the traffic these sites have been generating for me."
Communication tool
Last year, Safinaz had a client based in Norway but who wanted to get married in a church in her hometown, Penang. "This client saw my Flickr gallery and emailed me her requests. I emailed her some sample ideas and she agreed to several hundred sari-themed wedding favours for her guests. As she is based in Europe, she connected me with her wedding planner."
The two wedding planners got together, looked for materials and proposed several ideas to the client via email.
"Once she had picked her favourite and sent in the deposit, I started work. The wedding favours were shipped to the wedding planner in Penang. Till today, I have not met the bride! We only communicated via email and Skype, and we collaborated based on trust. Without technology, the deal would never have taken place."
Dotcom move
Though the chance to generate a bigger income is always there, Safinaz prefers her online business to grow according to her own pace. "I want to deliver quality products and services. I hope my business will grow in time and I can have a showroom and boutique, but only when I am ready.
"Next in the pipeline is setting up a proper website, a move up from my blog. I am still gathering materials for the website and hope to have it ready by year end. I am also learning more about coding and HTML as I go along. I believe it is better to learn to do it myself rather than engage a website programmer so that I have full control over my website."
For those who have the perception that wedding planners are expensive, Safinaz says: "Engaging a wedding planner can help smoothen your preparations and take care of the little details that can create big impact."
Apart from weddings, Maya Puri Creations also handles engagement, birthdays, house-warming and other events. Safinaz also produces handmade crafts such as bags, totes, bookmarks and souvenirs.
A little buzz sound from her notebook signalled the end of interview. "Sorry, I've got to go now. I'm meeting a client whom I serviced in 2008. She's getting married, again..."
