When I decided to become a makeup artist, I thought it would just be that. Makeup. A kit. Clean brushes. Book clients. Done.
Nobody tells you about the rest of it.
The constant admin. The advertising. The website that somehow always needs updating. The emails. The invoices. The scheduling - fuck me - the scheduling. If you work in bridal, scheduling is its own entire job inside the job. And for ten years I did it badly, stressed about it constantly and just accepted it as part of life.
Here's the thing about me that I don't always lead with: I'm neurodivergent and I have dyscalculia (and also probably dyslexia). Numbers are a language I don't speak and genuinely never will. I finally know that I'm not stupid, it's not a lack of trying, my brain just doesn't process them the way other people's do. Something as simple as adjusting a timeline by 45 minutes would send me into a spiral. I'd overthink it, get it wrong, second-guess myself, redo it and I'd have to get my husband to check it because I still wouldn't trust it. Every wedding morning I'd show up having checked the schedule fifteen times and still not be certain it was right. And sometimes it wasn't.
I tried everything. Spreadsheets. Notes apps. Generic scheduling tools built for offices and nine-to-five jobs that had absolutely no idea what a wedding morning looks like. Nothing worked. Not really.
So after ten years of making do, I decided to build something myself.
The Wedding Day Scheduler was born out of pure necessity and a lot of frustration. It calculates everything automatically - you add your people, select your services and the timings do themselves. No maths. No second-guessing. No spiral. I can see the whole morning clearly, in order, and I built this thing so I trust it.
It has genuinely changed how I work. I show up calmer. I feel more professional. And I don't spend the night before a wedding checking and rechecking numbers that my brain was never going to be friends with.
The scheduler then became part of something bigger and so Sanatsal Studio was born. Sanatsal (pronounced Suh-naht-sahl) means artistic in Turkish. I'm half Turkish so choosing a Turkish word for this brand felt important to keep it unique like my own name. It's also a quiet nod to where I come from and who I am. I'm not going to pretend I wasn't terrified to put this out into the world, I had a full blown anxiety attack sending it to my friend to test!
Building something from nothing, on top of a full wedding season, with a brain that doesn't always cooperate, is not small. But I did it. I actually saw a project through, mum!
Sanatsal Studio will be a collection of tools I'm building for artists who struggle with the business side of this job. For neurodivergent creatives who are brilliant at what they do but find the admin overwhelming. For anyone who just wants clearer systems so they can get back to the hair and makeup they actually love.
I won't pretend it was easy to build. There was a lot of blood, sweat, tears and a frankly embarrassing number of versions before it was right. But it exists now. And I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.
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