Charice Thompson- Blanchard

I attribute my success to God. God was my motivation. I got stricken with sciatica at the point where my daughter was young, and I was unable to walk. I thought about something I could do with my hands that would help me move, so I started decorating. Then I had another bout where I couldn't walk again, so I thought I could use my mind. I love this field and love helping people, so that's how I got into wedding planning. I had developed relationships with different people, different decorators and venues by that point in time, so I got into the wedding planning so I could use my resources to outsource some things. But then my condition got better, so I just continued to do it all.

The simplest and the best advice that stuck with me over the course of the years is never allow your job to change who you are. You're a great person, you have a great personality, things can get hard, but make sure that it doesn't change you. You don't lose the love and the passion. I always tell people that I teach that when you lose the passion for it, when you lose the love for it, it becomes just a job, and I no longer want to work. Every day, I feel like I'm going on vacation. When I decorate and do things like that, it makes me happy, and that's when you get the best quality work out of me. When I lose my passion, I don't want to do it anymore.

Get into this field because you love it. Get into this field because it is a passion for you, because it is a change of life for people. What I do as a wedding planner and a decorator is change people's full life. I am actually bringing their special day to life, and it is one of the highlighted, most important days in their life. So you can't, you have to do your best. You definitely have to do your best. You have to take it seriously, and you have to love it, because this is their expression of love coming out in their wedding that people will see live and on display.

The biggest challenges right now for me is sometimes my help was a challenge. But right now, with me shutting down the venue, I have learned over the course of years that you kind of have to master what you do. You may own maybe a decorator business, you may have some downturns, but then I'm the rental company, and so that can also generate an income, and then I can be the corporate planner, and then I own the venue. So I try to hit all key points where all aspects of the business run hand-in-hand, so that everyone has this roller coaster that they may go through. Even when you go through dead zones, you have to have something that generates a revenue at that point in time, so I try to check off all the boxes, where when one is not doing well, the other one can definitely pick up where that was at. And that's where it was financially, with everybody wanting to become some of these things, or open a business in your field, you have to be not only competitive, you have to do good business as well as be loyal to your customers so they'll be returning to you. So I tried to check off all the things so they will come directly to me for all services instead of me having to do the hard work of finding a florist and all that, or I just offer this stuff to them, or I subcontract someone to them. I've kind of over the years mastered what the needs of the people are, so that I could kind of knock all of that down and cover all bases.

Family and God are first and foremost. Remaining professional all the time is important. You definitely have to be a person that supports people, that definitely gives them access to your life. My name and my business is Simply Elegant. I count myself as a class of my own, and I have to have a standard and live up to what I say that I am. I have to remain that way, no matter where I am, because I am my product. I can't say that I'm simply elegant and I don't represent myself that way. It is a standard of living and a standard of being also.