There are currently several unique ideas designed for engagement and wedding ceremonies, as the celebrations themselves become more elaborate and modern. Since the beginning of the ceremony remains the most important part, a 24-year-old female broke with traditional rites of celebration, launching ‘Kosha Tale’, the first voiceover project for weddings and engagements which produces an audio track for couples’ fairytale festivities by mixing her voiceover with songs and comedic parts from films, as well as presenting the most important characteristics of the bride and groom’s personalities.
Hence, Daily News Egypt interviewed Yousra Tawfik, the founder of Kosha Tale, to discover more about her journey with Kosha Tale, the services that it provides, in addition to the challenges that she faced in her journey.
Notably, Tawfik graduated from the faculty of Mass Communication, the English section, Cairo University. Since she was a child, Tawfik used to receive feedback from her friends and family that her voice was cheerful, therefore she decided to utilise her voice in her Kosha Tale project.
Making people happy is Kosha Tale’s goal
Tawfik started narrating to DNE her journey with Kosha Tale by stating that that her dream since she was a child was to be a radio presenter.
“I used to close my room door, allowing no one to enter, writing a paper for them that I am on air. Accordingly recording audios has been my hobby since I was child,” she said with a glint in her eyes.
“When two of my close friends got engaged, and I wanted to prepare for them something to show them how much I was happy for them and that I loved them, especially since both the bride and the groom were my friends, I started thinking of any non-traditional way to make them happy. Everyone else were creating collages with pictures for them or writing posts for them on Facebook. However, I told myself I know that the best thing I am good at in life is speaking into the microphone, so let me record their fairytale love story and then I published the track on my account on Facebook,” Tawfik happily recounted.
She then continued to say that surprisingly she found that the track went viral on Facebook and that it received very positive feedback, even from people that she did not know, noting that what also made her happy at that period in time was that the couple used the track in the opening service of their engagement ceremony.
“The situation passed, and I did not really think deeply that I could use this success and transform it into a project. Then, following my graduation from mass communication in 2016, I applied to work as a radio presenter in different institutions, however I was rejected due to my lack of working years of experience,” she revealed a tangible problem which fresh graduates presently face.
“At the same time, another two of my friends got engaged, so then I also decided to record their fairytale story in a track, but this time I considered launching a project for wedding voiceovers. I started it in August 2016, and I called it as Kosha Tale” she recalled with a smile on her face. (Kosha in Arabic means an elaborately decorated bride and groom settee which they lounge in during the wedding ceremony)
Concerning the name Kosha Tale, Tawfik said she choose the name as it clearly expresses the concept of the bride and groom during the ceremony, ‘Kosha’, in addition to the storytelling, ‘Tale’.
She mentioned that the idea itself is strange, so she wanted to express it in a straightforward name to convey the idea simply.
After that, she declared, she launched a Facebook page, and put the track on the page, indicating that she was surprised by how fast the track spread.
Tawfik remarked that this project’s main goal from is to spread happiness among people, calling attention to the fact that she was sending an indirect message through this project to fresh graduates that through hard work they can create professional work if they get the chance or opportunity.
In terms of marketing, Tawfik articulated that her only current marketing channel are the shares of her tracks by her friends and family on social media, revealing it as the power of social media.
Tawfik noted that Kosha Tale tracks reached over 50,500 plays on sound cloud until now, and that the Facebook page attained 7,500 likes.
Tawfik thinks outside the box
Tawfik voiced that she expanded her project to include presenting the couples’ fairytale story through a sand drawing show in wedding or engagement ceremonies.
She stated that she cooperated with a man who drew on sand and presented a live show in wedding and engagement ceremonies the couples’ fairytale story through drawing it on sand, with Tawfik’s voiceover in the background.
“I always express that I act in Kosha Tale like a tailor who customises the couples’ stories, therefore I thought about having the sand drawing as it is very personalised art,” she explained further.
“Every couple always see that their story is different from any other couple, and this is true as their love story with its details will never be repeated, while the first song or show could be repeated in any ceremony, that is why I think this what distinguishes my project, and accordingly I think that I am a designer who adjusts the track according to the couple’s unique story,” she claimed.
“The sand drawing idea came to me when my brother got married to Russian woman. Their story is diverse as she is from Russian and he is from Egypt and now both of them live in Germany. They both met in Germany but then they got married in Denmark. Their story includes several languages and countries, and this inspired me to create for them a track. However, I realised the bride will not understand the Arabic language as well as the part of the films or songs as she is not a native Arabic speaker,” Tawfik elaborated.
At that moment, Tawfik decided to craft for them a sand drawing live show during their wedding as through this sand drawing the bride’s family and bride herself will not misread Tawfik’s surprise.
Most powerful love tale that Tawfik listened to
Throughout the two years that Tawfik has been creating countless tracks for couples, when discussing the most powerful love story she heard, Tawfik imparted that it was the love story of Maha and Bassam.
She disclosed that this couple had an accident the night before their weeding which led them both to enter the intensive care suffering from severe injuries. Of course, they delayed their wedding for a year.
“After a year, they had their wedding ceremony, but I changed the whole track to represent their story throughout this year, neglecting the part before the accident,” she said.
“Sometimes we need to test our relationship to ensure that our choice was right, by going through difficult times, but the test for this couple came on the night before their wedding, which made their story the most difficult and powerful love story that I have come across throughout the two years,” Tawfik commented.
Humanity is key setting behind the Kosha Tales settings
The Kosha Tale’s founder admitted that in her work she most enjoyed the events that happened behind the scenes. She realized how people love each other, and she also noticed that love is not only for lovers, but it also for friends, it is also for friends who may even love each other better than lovers, and for mothers or fathers who sacrifice their lives for their children.
“Among the situations that I cannot forget, was when one day a father asked me to make a Kosha Tale track for his seven-year-old daughter. I replied that Kosha Tale is for couples. I was actually very surprised when I learned that he wants to create for his daughter from such a young age a Kosha Tale since he and his wife are very old people so perhaps they are not sure if they could live long enough to witness their daughter on her wedding day, so they want to create for her a Kosha Tale track from now to express to her in it how much they love her, and they wanted to leave with her this moment,” she recalled.
She also remembered another situation when a bride asked Tawfik not to mention the price of the Kosha Tale service to her groom, so as to decrease the wedding costs for him, affirming that if he knew the real price of the service he would definitely pay it, but she wanted to cut down the costs for him.
Tawfik added that customers need to reserve for the service two months before the ceremony, but unfortunately once before a bride called her asking to reserve before the wedding with a very short notice period, thus she apologised to her and told her she could not crate the track in that short time.
What Tawfik could not forget was when she found one of the bride’s friends calling her, offering to help her as she worked in exchange for Tawfik creating the track, just to make her friend happy.
“At that time, I realised how can people offer to do anything, just to make their beloved ones happy,” she said with a cheerful smile.
Kosha Tale changes its founder’s opinion on love
Each job affects its employees, impacting the views and opinions, as society around employees constantly sways them, but in Tawfik’s case, she is surrounded by the love energy of the couples that could influence her opinions and views on the topic of love.
This exactly what happened with Tawfik after listening to different cheerful and painful love stories that ended with marriage: she completely changed her mindset about the topic of love.
“Before Kosha Tale, when I listened to any love story, I would recall the image of the heroic prince or white knight in fairy tales who often rides a white horse and that will make the world shine bright and make all my wishes come true. But after listening to different stories, I realised that love is in the details that we see in normal daily routines, and that now after loving someone we love this daily routine just because our significant other is present in these details,” she lovingly said.
She phrased that love is when you love your life, just because of the presence of your significant other, even if these details are not the best ones.
Challenges and aspirations
Tawfik divulged that at first she faced many challenges including technical problems such as not knowing how to produce a purified sound, nor how to edit the voiceover in order to mix it with song, among others.
She professed that she overcome these problems by taking classes, auditions, courses, workshops, in addition to resorting to YouTube to find out step-by-step how to do everything she needed to learn to do.
On that note, she conveyed that she kept trying to develop her voice through workshops, courses, and that she tried to listen to every tiny feedback, with the aim of improving herself through the feedback she received.
She also noted that she is one of the lucky ones, as she has a very supportive family and a support system of friends, giving an example that her mother who works as a journalist used to help her with her opinion in the scripts.
“On the anniversary of Kosha Tale, my friends supported me by collecting all the feedback that Kosha Tale received and printed them on two charts, and hung them in my room, ” She said happily.
“There are many times when I felt down and stressed, but I always overcame this feeling through the love of my family and friends. Previously, I had left the media career and worked in a well reputed institution, looking for stability. Actually I found stability, but I missed being me. Thus, this made me leave that job and return back to Kosha Tale, despite receiving a very good performance appraisal,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“I will never stop doing what I love. I aim to expand Kosha Tale services, and I plan to make it even more comprehensive with voiceovers to cover different moments-not just weddings-weddings will be just a section, but I will add to it for example birthdays, baby showers, and more,” she declared.
Tawfik finally confided that Kosha Tale is merely a stepping stone on the path toward her big dream that she is working toward which is to become a radio presenter.
