We are an all women of color event planning agency focused on curating magical, meaningful moments for the community through events. Our women of color team is committed to curating creative, inclusive, and diverse spaces in the events industry.
We’re here to challenge the status quo and pave the way for a new generation of event experience curators. Contact us now for a complimentary consultation: [email protected].
What an amazing example of customer service and 1:1 magical moments with your fans!! Especially in the face of tough times and event cancellations. Adele is the besttttt 💜💜💜
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adele-facetimes-fans-in-las-vegas-personally-apologies-for-postponing-shows_n_61ed7202e4b0239579467dfc
Forgiving fans began to chant, "It's OK," while the singer cried over the phone.
![📣 ANNOUNCEMENT 📣 If you follow our owner and CEO Gina Mariko] or are on our email list you probably already heard, we're...](https://img3.evepla.com/133/518/2054931401335184.jpg)
📣 ANNOUNCEMENT 📣 If you follow our owner and CEO Gina Mariko] or are on our email list you probably already heard, we're going on a BREAK!
We made it through 2021 and it was seriously a whirlwind of really high highs and really low lows, but we’re overall so thankful to have made it through as a small business during such a tumultuous time where so much of the events industry was still closed 🙏🏽
Now we have another year ahead of us, but we foresee that 2022 events are going to look very similar to 2021 and many of our clients are still leaning on virtual due to Covid. With that said, ✨our team has decided to take a much needed BREAK while we regroup, refocus, and realign after so much PIVOTING.✨ So we'll be taking the next 3 months off for REST.
We are still accepting requests for events but won't begin doing consultations until April 2022 at the earliest. Until then, we have endless GRATITUDE for our Clients, Event Partners, Vendors, and Community who stood by our side last year and helped this ALL WOMEN OF COLOR SMALL BIZ THRIVE! 💜⚡
To learn more about what it took to make this big decision, check out this blog Gina Mariko] wrote about her honest, open, and super transparent personal experience trying to navigate growing a business during a pandemic, and why the team is taking a much needed break. Because honestly, 🧘🏽♀️WE ALL DESERVE A BREAK right now 😴
💥 Peep the NEW BLOG & NEW WEBSITE ⚡ WWW.GINAMARIKO.COM ⚡ to get the full scoop.
📷: @jamiecardenasphotographer
#todadit #makeitmariko #eventprofs
Phew, we made it through 2021. That was seriously a whirlwind of really high highs and really low lows, but we’re overall so thankful to have made it through as a small biz during such a tumultuous time where so much of the events industry was still closed.
In addition to our favorite client memories, we want to take time to celebrate some of our biggest WINS of 2021 as a company!
👩🏽🤝👩🏾 We grew the team and went to 4 full time employees and 15+ contractors & creatives, ALL WOMEN! Our events got bigger, more complex, and required much more staff to operate.
📈 We planned 40 events in 2021 and saw a 175% increase in the total event package booked! Our clients trusted us with bigger event packages and more planning, design, and production.
💜 We donated over ✨$72K in Pro Bono Event Planning services & Cash Donations✨ to Nonprofits & Community Events.
🖥️ We completed 30 virtual events on 4 different virtual platforms & became pros at the Hybrid event experience (virtual + in person).
💰 We won 2 grants! The Jane Walker First Women Grant with @ifundwomen & KKR Small Business Builders Grant.
#HELLAPROUD #makeitmariko #eventprofs
Thank you to Neil Yuzon Productions for the amazing photos and thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate the first Brown is Beautiful Holiday Party celebrating POC creatives!
We know that it is such a crazy time right now with the pandemic, but we also know that we still need to learn how to live our lives and find our JOY to survive this together. We were so honored to gather some of our favorite POC creatives together, as safely as we could for the night to celebrate making it through this crazy ass year, and to honor our creative energy and inspiring community.
COVID SAFETY: All attendees were vaccinated or PCR covid tested, masks were required indoors, we only filled to 30% capacity of the venue, and lots of open airflow was present in the venue at all times.
Happy New Year to you all! And we look forward to seeing you next year.
Loved the energy at our Brown is Beautiful photo experience! Shout out to all the creative partners that made it a success:
- Design by Make it Mariko
- Nurture State (https://nurturestate.com/)
- City Bay Photoooth (https://citybayphotobooths.com/)
- One True Love Vintage (https://www.onetruelovevintage.com/)
- Sparky's Balloons (https://sparkysballoons.com/)
- Non uniform Standard (https://www.instagram.com/nonuniformstandard/)
Happiest birthday to our Founder and CEO, @ginamariko 🥳💜🎈
Gina always reminds that she started @makeitmariko as a birthday present to herself on her 30th birthday. And every year, Make it Mariko grows and matures with her, so this year celebrating our 6 Year Anniversary and Gina's 36th Birthday was a significant one.
We're still in a global pandemic, but we need to keep living and finding our JOY. Thank you to everyone who came out to #brownisbeautiful last night!! 🤎🤎🤎 It was endless joy, safe hugs, sooo much dancing, and good food. As we love to see at our community events ⚡
More photos and video to come of the epic celebration of brown joy with our Creative Community 🤎🙏🏽
📷: @n.yuzon
Rentals: @otlvintage
🎈: @sparkysballoons
Sign: @nonuniformstandard
Florals: @nurturestateshop
Venue: @cielcreativespace
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#makeitmariko #eventprofs #cielcreativespace #wocevents #ladyboss #girlboss #woc
This year has been another crazy one for the books. But we made it, and we want to say THANK YOU. To our partners in the event hustle, the creative industry as a whole, and our EVENT FAM. So we’re saying thank you in the way we know best >> with an event ;)
December 29 // 7-11PM PT // IRL @cielcreativestudios (invite only) & livestreaming on @YouSound. We’re so honored to bring you a new event experience that we like to call:
🤎🤎🤎BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL🤎🤎🤎
We’re not working this party, we’re THROWING it! As a thank you for riding with Make it Mariko for the past 6 years, we wanted to create one last space for the year to celebrate our collective JOY. We have no poker face here y’all, this past year was rough - but instead of recounting what we left behind, let’s take a moment to express our gratitude to the folks who have kept us connected and inspired.
Our in-person event experience is INVITE-ONLY with limited capacity, but we’re trying to make room for our lovers & friends ;) Head to the website to request an invite: www.makeitmariko.com/brownisbeautiful, and as we have space open, we will allocate tickets. Dress code is 50 shades of brown but as always, please dress FOR YOURSELF.
Stay tuned for our performer + vendor lineup! WEOUTCHEAAA 😤
It's #SmallBusinessSaturday and today our small biz @makeitmariko has only one thing to say -- THANK YOU! 🙏🏽 No we're not asking you to share anything, or to book, or to refer us. We are just so so grateful to our entire community and here to give thanks ⚡💜.
2021 was one of the hardest years for our small biz, for some obvious and not so obvious reasons. Covid hit the entire event industry so hard and we had high hopes that we'd return IRL in 2021, but alas virtual was still the way so we kept pushing forward, investing more in virtual events and this year alone we grew our team and more than doubled in size in order to take on more clients!
Anyone who "pivoted" their biz during covid, we have so much love and respect for you! Because that sh*t was not easy. We created almost 4 entirely new business/pricing models just this year to stay alive, add more staff, and adjust our rates and packages and contracts in an ever changing industry. In person > Virtual > back to In person > Hybrid 😭 ugh
The expression "building the train tracks as you're driving the train". Yup that was 2021. And it was all so exhausting. But we're here, we're alive, and we're GRATEFUL. We love y'all so much! ⚡🥳SAVE THE DATE for DEC 29 as we have something in the works to celebrate our entire community IRL in Berkeley 🎧💜
What does it mean to rest in power?
Our hunch is that it means to embrace life in it’s entirety; the grief, the confusion, the healing, the joy, and most vividly, the memories that mark the moments that mattered.
Once we complete that cycle, “rest in power” then becomes the test of finding the charm in doing it all over again.✨
With one exception: we now carry even more treasured moments in our story bank. How we choose to share them; to inspire, to gift, and nurture those around us that still walk this life, is up to you. As you contemplate the this thought, “Remember to smile, kasama. We take care of ourselves so that we can serve our community and each other.” - Amado Khaya Canham Rodriguez (1998-2020)
A heartfelt thank you (and we love you!) to @madprofessora for trusting in us to plan Amado’s 1 Year Anniversary and All Souls Day Celebration. We invite you to checkout our last IG post on this event to learn more about Amado’s life story (link in post).
Amado’s mom (@madprofessora ) has established a non-profit fund, the Amado Khaya Foundation, in his honor. All funds will go towards social justice projects and movements that Amado cared about. 💪🏽For those that are able, direct donations can be made at https://givebutter.com/amadokhaya
📸: @n.yuzon
#belovebelovedbeamado
Today's virtual livestream hub stage with @openspace.ai + @makeitmariko + @addvirtual ⚡💙 About to go live on @hopinhq!
Design: @makeitmariko
Sign: @leafandlacedesigns
Plants: @nurturestateshop
Shelves: @blueprintstudiosevents
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#makeitmariko #openspaceai #virtualevents #eventprofs #hopinhq
We invite you all to join us TONIGHT, 6-9pm PST on twitch.tv/amadokhaya to honor All Souls Day, and to celebrate the extraordinary life that was Amado Khaya Canham Rodriguez.
Today is a day where we give ourselves to the moments of the present & of the past — to the loss, to the grief, and to the uncertainty of what the future holds. This event is for anyone with an ancestor, regardless of generation or circumstance; to join us in power to heal together as we fondly remember the impact our loved ones had on this Earth.
Folks can read more about Amado’s life at www.drrobynrodriguez.com/amadokhaya. Be sure to scroll through the next slides to learn how you can create your own altar at home as you tune in on livestream.
We hope to see y’all there. ♥️
💥Exciting news: Make it Mariko is BOOKED for the rest of 2021! 💥 That's right, we're closing our books (and actually already did so over a month ago) and not accepting any more events/clients for the rest of the year. But let's unpack this shall we? 🤔
Making the decision to close your books for the year is a CONSCIOUS choice. It's something that an owner does purposefully. And while it might sound easy, it can actually be a tough decision to make especially during such a hard year where events were so scarce, and where there's so much uncertainty for next year.
To be honest, December is the BUSIEST month for events and we are still getting hit up for holiday events. But after such a long, exhausting, and traumatic 20 months of attempting to survive and pivot our events during covid/quarantine, we are all TIRED 😫
In our journey to work to #DecolonizeBusiness, this crazy time has taught us some of the hardest lessons, within such a short time. Things like:
🚫 Learning how to say NO, to clients and events that don't fuel us or who don't value our work.
🙌🏽 Setting boundaries, and knowing when to push back, say no, and refer out.
🙏🏽 Accepting that making just "enough" to keep the lights on, pay the bills, and cover payroll is OK. And it's ok to STOP after that. We don't need to keep on pushing, even if there are "empty slots" on our calendar. Empty is good :)
🌷 Taking time to REST. As a company we are going to have much less of a load for the next 2 months, and we won't be operating at "capacity" -- and that's OKKKK. We DESERVE REST. And WE WILL REST.
Happy Friday everyone. ⏩SHARE with us a boundary that you've set for yourself recently with some of your clients OR tell us about an EPIC NO that you recently accomplished :) ⏪
29 Retail Vendors 🪴
16 Food Vendors 🥥
15 Performances 🎤
Endless SOMA Pilipinas Community.
And this is a FREE event y’all! And in true pandemic fashion, we’ve got you covered in the IRL experience and with a livestream on Twitch 🤯 Tune in at https://twitch.tv/undsicoveredsf
If you only have energy prioritize one thing this Filipino American History Month; it’s to come through to @undiscoveredsf!!
It’s HAPPENING. Tomorrow, Sat Oct 16th, 2021. 12 - 6PM. Yes, you can bring your dogs. Can’t wait to shop, learn, eat, sing dance — ALL THE ABOVE, with y’all!! 🛍🕺🏽🍮💃🏽🪘🪴
#weoutchea #undiscoveredsf #somapilipinas
Issa party issa party issa party and…A NAIL SALON??!! It’s getting craaazy up in here 💅🏼🔥
Ain’t no healing journey can come full circle without a dance party. Setlist will feature @djhellal, @amiihan, and @ladiesofsound.la 🤯 Also peep @prizm.nails coming through to make sure your nail game is tight for a night out 😤
What started out as brick & mortar, focused on healthy nail care and limited edition nail art, is now a full time online shop - and now they’ll be giving us a preview of what they’ve been working on 👀. Name a better party that has featured this much womxn power.
Afterparty is open to ALL who are in support of our community, not just Pinays and summit attendees! Bring your tito, your best friend, your favorite budding female DJ’s, etc etc etc.
Big ups to @7thwestoakland for hosting us! Hope to see y’all IRL this Saturday!!!🎉🎉🎉
GRANT ALERT💥 Exciting opportunities coming soon to our fellow WOC small businesses…
Did you know that over 70% of women founders report lack of capital as the NUMBER ONE barrier to getting their business off the ground? Women also report a huge access gap to coaches, support systems, and overall community that will approach their creative ideas at face value.
This is where we come in.
On this Women’s Equality Day, join us in celebrating the $10,000 award funded to us by IFundWomen for their Jane Walker First Women Grant Program - big ups to Johnnie Walker whiskey for celebrating the achievments of women and pushing the boundaries for gender equality 💖🥃.
As a team of women constantly trying to break molds within our own industry, we know the struggle all too well. And that’s why we’re sharing our abundance and will be launching our OWN grant program! Info to come soon, so make sure you’re following us on all our social media handles to stay tuned 😉
It feels toooo good to be back. As in-person events slowly make their comeback, we’re still basking in the dream that was planning REBIRTH at Ciel Creative Space ❤️ We went full force with 8+ studios, back to back walls filled with live music, photoshoots, floral installations and Bay Area vendors galore. If you’re drumming up ideas for a 2022 event — whether it be in person, hybrid, or virtual, CIEL is the place to be!!
We’ll let our recap video speak for itself (: Check out the blog now for full media and vendor coverage of our best pandemic event to date.
HUGE shoutout to our friends at UpperCloud, AddVirtual, Stuart Event Rentals, Creative Transit Agency, The Little Giant Lighting and Grip Co., Oakland Venue Management
(just to name a few 😉) for bringing this dream to life!!
https://makeitmariko.com/cielrebirth2021/
After 15 months of being in quarantine and large in-person events canceled, we were OVERJOYED to be able to finally partner with our amazing new Venue Partner, Pinay owned Ciel Creative Space in Berkeley! [/tatsu_text][/tatsu_column][/tatsu_row][/tatsu_section]
981 Mission Street
San Francisco
94103
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Send a message to Make it Mariko:
Make it Mariko (pronounced mah-ri-ko) is a Bay Area event production company focused on creating magical, meaningful, and unforgettable moments. Moments that make you feel, make you cry, make you laugh, give you perspective on life; moments that you’ll remember forever. We focus on San Francisco street festivals (like our featured night market UNDISCOVERED SF), corporate events, nonprofit & arts events, and weddings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Contact us now for a complimentary consultation. [email protected] or 415-489-0143.
www.makeitmariko.com Instagram: @makeitmariko
Karina Marie Diaz Portrait & Editorial Photog
San Francisco & Santa Cruz Studio Locations