Hi, I am Rasika Bhatia a through and through Delhi Girl without the Airs.
As a little girl I was perpetually to be found anywhere in the neighbourhood except my own home. I was the neighbourhood’s favourite child, chatterbox and like my mother called me 'carrier of happiness'. My grandmother named me Rasika, which means 'ones who keeps everyone entertained and happy’, and boy could she see through me when I was born or what to name me Rasika. A people’s person right from the start and I felt alive in company.
When my cousin got married I was the one jumping over the moon, I was 14 but I had to do it all. I had to be in every song, every dance just like school where I would be out of class / school singing and dancing at inter-school competitions and thousands of stay backs for practice !! I had to organise who will wear what, every detail. I guess the eureka moment happened very early on for me, when I picked up all the jewellery boxes of my cousin and decorated each one of them. Encouraging friends and family made my thoughts firmer.
My Father would often say I will soon see your trucks loaded with stuff for people’s wedding running around Delhi. What will you write on it and LOL !! we both would laugh.
And hence as destiny has its way of catching up with you I became a wedding planner by luck and a graphics designer by profession and a graduate in English Honors. I strongly believes there are no shortcuts to Hard work which is 80% and the rest 20% is being at the right place at the right time!
I have worked as a visual artist and a copy writer with Archie’s cards where I got my first opportunity to put down my beautiful imaginations in action. But soon I felt stunted in my job and wanted a larger canvas which could bring my visuals to life and that made me start my own flower and lifestyle shop where I created small handcrafted candles and gifts until one day an opportunity came walking into my door and that took me to the world of wedding designing and planning.
The timing was perfect to venture into the world of weddings as there were very few who regarded wedding planning as a profession it was either a florist or a tent walla? Your family along with extended family planned your wedding, choose for you, dictated your every move. People would often ask 'what’s a wedding planner?? who needs one ??’ It was just the way our social was structured. But being a strong headed person that I am and with a little luck of knowing people who shared my vision (to some extend), I saw the opportunity of fulfilling my dream. A wedding setup and wedding themes which I had only build like castles of clouds in my thoughts or only created them on my computer, at max pasted them on the cover of a greeting card. 20 years ago those wedding setups were unseen and unimaginable.
I again got lucky enough to get an equally crazy life partner (a dreamer at heart) who was also a creative genius in the line of Clothing. So he understood my thirst, and together we put a dream team of two talented Bengalis together and slowly became a name to reckon with in the wedding industry.
'Wedding commitments' was born and has been a part of some bigwig weddings like that of Airtel, Jindal’s, Thappars & Munjals to name a few. I also got an opportunity to take on some international projects in UAE and Southeast Asia. Wedding for a sheikh’s daughter in Oman was the high point of my career and I still can’t get over it ;). My work took me to numerous destinations in India from desserts to the mountains, but oceans in my tryst with weddings.
I feel my work is recreational and I feel lucky that I could earn a living by following my passion. But don’t get dazzled by the glitters of the industry it's an extremely demanding industry. You are always dealing with peoples feelings, their special day which takes the stress of delivering perfection to a different level and hence currently I am working as a wedding consultant, helping small start-ups, making upcoming wedding planners realise their dreams the way I did and hand-holding some twists and turns.
To top it all I am also on the path to fulfilling my next dream of being an author. And what else can be true to my personality than to take my readers on a roller coaster ride with me into the world of weddings, written in my true witty style :). Hilarious, totally unedited stories told as they happened!! So watch out for 'WEDDING MASALA BY RASIKA BHATIA' ( behind the scenes from the wedding planners eyes) launching in a few months.
Website: www.weddingcommitment.com
Insta handle - @inlovewithdecorandevents
email:- inlovewithdecorevents@gmail.com
Rasika Bhatia
( India )