Nikah Planner is a service that makes a nikah, or Islamic wedding, happen correctly according to religious principles, smoothly, efficiently, and in a way that lets friends of other faiths take part without feeling uncomfortable. This is done through step-by-step consultation and advice, along with handling equipment, venue, decoration, attire, and other matters, plus a team present on the actual wedding day from the very first minute of the morning of the event, offered both online and offline through in-studio conversations.
Nikah Planner: when did it begin?
Nikah Planner in Thailand officially began in 2021, led by the Araya team. Previously, a nikah, or Islamic wedding, would be arranged by an officiant procured by one side of the family, prepared according to the differing local customs of each area, with no fixed format, and it often ran into problems — especially communication problems, cultural differences, a lack of understanding about the wedding process, and a lack of preparation on the part of both families. Araya Wedding Studio itself first opened its doors in 2009, expanded to a Hat Yai branch, and opened a Bangkok studio branch in 2011, continuing through to today.
The starting point of Nikah Planner
Over the following years, the Araya team began helping couples arrange Islamic weddings, for both fully Muslim families and interfaith families. In the early period of organizing these events, the support provided was mainly around equipment, much like any general wedding studio. During this time, the team came to recognize the various problems arising from the lack of a good management system for organizing Islamic weddings, and gradually developed a body of knowledge. Under its first name, this knowledge was applied within a small space at Araya, and this service was called Private Nikah, a term that subsequently spread within the Muslim market from that point on.
New and unfamiliar
In the early period, society was not yet accustomed to a nikah-organizing service that wasn’t run by an imam, and the service model focused on planning and consultation alongside equipment preparation, which was new to Thai society as well as Muslim society. Couples still understood organizing a wedding to mean equipment alone, so the service wasn’t very popular at first. Most of the clients who used the service were therefore interfaith couples who wanted to share the real problems they faced and mainly needed help. In the first year the service was offered, the team handled only 2 couples per year in this format, before the number increased substantially in subsequent years.
When it began to be known
In the following years, working together more with officiants caused society to begin to recognize this kind of service. Both the scale of events and the variety of services began to expand — for example, from just 20 guests to 100 and then 200 guests in turn. In many cases, couples also had venues of their own that they wanted the team to look after, and had already brought in some of the services themselves. During this period, the team created a service called Wedding Planner or Wedding Specialist to meet these varied needs. Once this service came into being, the consultation format grew more complex, and the guest count for couples receiving consultation reached as many as 1,300 for some couples. During this period, the team developed its body of knowledge and specialized Islamic consultation services substantially, building a systematic working framework and developing an online planning system, among many other things that followed.
Before developing into an Organizer
Over the past four or five years, this development grew to the point where some couples wanted the team to be the full host of the event, together with providing consultation and equipment preparation. Through working in the Wedding Planner format, the team gained many wedding partners joining in, and also screened out many, in order to find quality teams to recommend to couples. Eventually, this led to a service called Wedding Organizer, a specific format that combines a consultation system with a system for sourcing contemporary wedding equipment together. In terms of function, the team offers some things itself, and for anything it does not have, the Araya team still provides full support to the couple as well.
The origin of Nikah Planner
In 2019, the team continued developing its knowledge to the point of covering the entire nikah planning process, down to seating arrangements or seating positions for the nikah, handling smaller matters such as dealing with an unpleasant imam, and other things, together with planning functions and equipment both offline and online. This gave Araya the most complete nikah planning system available today. At the same time, the team recognized that the term “Wedding Planner” might no longer be sufficient and could not convey the picture of this specific service, so it developed a new term: Nikah Planner
or Nikah Organizer, the first official and systematic use of this term in Thailand.
Conclusion and goal
Throughout the team’s growth over the years, we have kept our core principle intact: Make Nikah Simple — keeping the nikah simple is best. Providing consultation and helping couples create a nikah that is correct according to religious principles, efficient, and one where friends of other faiths and family can take part without feeling uncomfortable remains what we have always valued most, because we believe that a good, strong nikah will be the essential foundation that helps a couple get through whatever obstacles they face afterward and live happily together forever.
There is no ready-made wedding, and no matter how much money is spent, a good nikah or a good wedding cannot simply be bought. The Araya team will stand alongside the couple and their families, working together to create a good nikah and a good wedding, always.
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