How my love in event design began

Ever since I could even remember, being a part of large family gatherings and massive community events was a very normal thing in my life. My father was the president of the San Francisco Pakistan Association at a time where the annual festivals were held at Golden Gate Park with almost 10,000 people in attendance. He then went on to become the US tour manager for the most popular Pakistani pop band until this day. I tell you this because growing up I was very close to my father, and I grew to have the same love he had for bringing people together and for making it an experience. (Every birthday at the house had at least 50 people followed by a musical evening with a full band set up in the living room!)

In 2000, my father recognized a need in the community for a large wedding hall and thus opened a large restaurant with 3 attached banquets hall. Throughout my adolescence, I watched and learned how to execute weddings for up to 1000 guests at a time where the “one-stop-shop” concept was a must. The one-stop-shop concept meant we had to take care of EVERYTHINGGG!

And let me tell you, I loved the intensity of the job! Yes, there were many challenging moments.. moments of anger and frustration but there was never a moment that I wanted to stop doing events.

A recurring complaint we had from clients was that the halls always looked the same. To combat that, I learned and replicated as many event trends as I could to give each client a new design and new feel of the hall. As I learned these trends, I started to perfect my basic skills and create my own style. I learned that I loved to harmonize different styles, harness the power of special effects lighting, and create designs that played off all the senses.

I feel truly blessed that I fell into this career path. I had studied Marketing in college and the idea of having a creative, artsy career had never even crossed my mind. As a child, I spent years painting, sewing, jewelry making - basically anything that was in the craft-related section of Toys R Us. I believed that creative hobbies were just that - hobbies - not something to make a career out of. I’m so glad that I finally understand just how untrue that is. If anything, my career has taught me that design and art run this world. All creation has design, and it was all thoughtfully done. This way of thinking allowed me to fall into friendships with like-minded individuals that helped me hone my creative intuition even further.

I created Thoughtful Design for those that want their designs to be experiences. For those that crave designs that can truly harness and express their styles. At Thoughtful Design, we do not subject ourselves to one style genre or one train of thought, that is why you will see we rarely do the same design twice.

This is only the beginning of Thoughtful Design and my creative journey. In this blog, I will continue to share my opinions based on my experiences in the event industry and tips and tricks that I have learned and will continue to learn in this process!

Welcome to Thoughtful Design!

With appreciation,

Samira