I love unique. I love different. I love how each couple has the opportunity to make their wedding an extension of themselves and their family. Kamna and Kal take your story and create lasting memories for your wedding day. Comic books, glass frames, save the dates and more, Lifestrummer takes your memorable moments and wraps them in a distinctive package.

Kal and Kamna, Co-founders of Lifestrummer

This dynamic duo are the owners of Lifestrummer, a highly innovative, personal and creative company that focuses on using comic book art to detail your love story. I recently met with Kamna (aka Kimi) and Kal to prepare a blog interview for you to get to know the story behind this wonderful couple. Kamna and Kal will help you take your personal love story and turn it into expressive artwork that your guests will remember for years to come.

OYDE: How did you both meet?

K&K: Kal & I met on a matrimonial website. I’m from Mumbai in India and Kal is from Montreal. We chatted online/talked on the phone for a year and a half. I liked him a lot. The guy made me laugh, he was a thorough gentleman and the clincher – every other week, he’d send me a drawing based on a conversation we’d have. He then came to India, we hung out for 3 weeks and in the third week, he proposed, I said yes & 6 months later we were married. Kal designed our wedding invite which was a single frame caricature of us. The first Lifestrummer comic book was based on our love story as well. This was really the genesis of Lifestrummer.

I moved to Canada in June 2009 and jumped into a year-long MBA program at the Richard Ivey School of Business. My school was located in London, a couple of hours drive from Toronto. So Kal would drive back and forth to be with me on the weekends. He really took care of me. He’d cook, he’d clean, take care of all the little things just so I could concentrate on my studies. My pillar of strength, he was! We have a comic book about that too.

OYDE: What made you decide on comic books as a way for couples to express their story?

K&K: Towards, the end of my course sometime in June 2010, Kal started to create comic books for fun. He created comic books based on what he knew best and what he knew best was us. So every Thursday, he would release a comic book based on our life together as a married couple. We’d share it with our friends on Facebook and they loved it. That’s when I saw the opportunity. We should be doing this for others. In my last semester, I wrote out the business plan and presented it to my class and right there in the classroom, I got my first customer. Since then, we’ve been at it full time. Instead of following the conventional MBA path of looking for a job, I focused all my energies on building Lifestrummer with Kal. I took advice from all of my professors, had my classmates challenge my assumptions and spent numerous sleepless nights wondering how insane I was to be doing this.

Sketches, caricatures, comic books have been part of our world’s heritage for ages: a universal medium that strikes a chord across generations and cultures. While we’re young, the pure, undiluted pleasure of comic books like, say, an ice cool Calvin&Hobbes, or Tintin the adventurer, or Superman the superhero, is unmatched. Those colourful frames, thought bubbles, gravity-defying actions, and wide-eyed fantasy, all allow imagination to run riot in the way that words seldom do. As we graduate to other forms of literature – books, magazines, newspapers – the charm of the comic book never really leaves us, still having the power to transport us to a fantastical world in an instant. That constant invasion of childhood memories is central to the Lifestrummer philosophy. We believe everyone has a story to tell – we want to be a part of those stories, and through our kaleidoscopic lens, interpret them in our own unique style – infusing them with a blend of color and fantasy that makes life less ordinary, more magical.

OYDE: How far in advance should couples get you their story?

K&K: Our turnaround time is around 12 weeks. We really want the couple to be involved in the creation process so that we can represent their story in a way that leaves them amazed. It’s an iterative and collaborative process where our goal is to create something that is truly personal and something they’ll cherish forever.

For more information or a personalized quote, you can contact Kamna and Kal using their Contact Us Page.

Astra Dwyer owns On Your Day Events, a wedding and event planning company in Durham Region planning weddings for the Greater Toronto Area. For more information join Astra on Facebook.