Hey! I’m Emily Decloux, recent wedding-haver, and event planner of 10+ years. Welcome to The Joy Factor! I decided to start The Joy Factor a few months ago when I was in the throes of planning my own wedding. Sure, I had planned many other events before, and I had everything on lock – but I didn’t realize just how fulfilling and joyful wedding planning would be for me!
About 12 years ago I was enrolled at Algonquin College in Ottawa, working on my post-graduate certificate in Event Management (heck yeah, certified event planner over here!) and I was getting ready to embark on my new career as an event planner. I mulled over the idea of starting a wedding planning company at that time, but ended up getting a job working in a corporate setting. OH MY GOD WAS IT EVER BORING. I spent my days dreaming of planning extravagant, enjoyable events. You know, not just lunch and learns that no one shows up to, or tech conferences that held zero interest for me personally.
At the same time, I was mentally planning about a hundred different scenarios in my head for my own wedding. Would we have it in a movie theatre (my husband and I are also both filmmakers)? Or would we have it in a park? Maybe I’d be lucky enough to get enough cash one day to buy a house and have a backyard wedding in Toronto! But even though none of these ideas really stuck in the end, it was still so much fun to plan out each scenario.
Guess I should have realized I still wanted to plan weddings!
In 2018 I quit my corporate job after suffering from several years of burnout, and then continued to burn out on a marketing business I started. I think I just needed a true rest from the world – and then of course 2020 popped up out of nowhere!
But let’s skip that part.
Back on the scene in 2021 I started producing comedy shows around Toronto. My passion for organizing events was BACK BABEEEE! And although it might seem weird to think of a passion being for planning events (even I think it’s a little odd sometimes) there’s still just so much satisfaction in seeing everything organized, accounting for all the tiny details, and making sure we’re always covered with multiple backup plans. Pretty quickly, my comedy troupe Big Chick Energy Sketch became known as one of the most organized in the city!
So how did I get back to the original plan, weddings?
I was sitting in a movie theatre with my (then) fiance and suddenly heard a thought pop into my head: It’s time to get married. Within a week of finding the venue in June, I had the whole thing organized. In fact, I found the venue around 10:30pm on a week night while watching The Golden Girls, and by midnight, the wedding had been completely planned. It made for a pretty restless sleep, I will admit!
Over the 4.5 months I spent planning my own wedding, I realized how truly joyful it was becoming for me to make plans, execute on them, make more, adjust schedules, get people’s preferences for food, all the ridiculous things that are normally pretty boring – I was eating it up! I frigging loved it all! So I started tossing the idea around to my friends… “Hey… maybe I’ll start a wedding planning biz, what do you think?” To which they all replied “well that’s obvious and perfect for you!”
So here we are today, and I can’t wait to bring my event planning expertise to your wedding planning, so that you can have a joyful time planning the best day of your life!
On Thursdays I’ll be sharing new videos and podcasts to help you plan your weddings, and if you need one on one help to plan your wedding whether you’re in Toronto or if you want to work remotely, please reach out! I’d love to hear all about your dream day and help you bring it to life!
– xo Em