In March 2020, the world of celebrations and events changed forever. The doors closed on a world that I’d been a part of for over 23 years. I always told myself that I was in a safe industry – people are always going to get married, throw parties and celebrate business success. They are life events after all! I could have never foreseen what we were about to embark on. It was like someone had turned off my oxygen supply. "What's going to happen now", I thought?

18 months on, one of the most challenging and incredible years of my life took place. My business survived and thankfully all my family are well, and my wonderful team and I are back out planning, designing and creating events again. The past year has definitely taught me some huge lessons, the main one being to slow down and enjoy life.

I’m not great at this, as I’m always working at a million miles an hour, however I’ve definitely learnt that if I’m going to spend my time creating extraordinary experiences for my clients, then I 100% have to lead by example, and that’s exactly what I’m doing now.

My day usually begins at 6am, with a gym session or walk to start the morning with a clear head. I’m a strong believer of using positive affirmations to give me a motivational boost. I never have two days the same, but as a whole, I split my week to work on the different aspects of my business. This could be supporting our events team,
site visits, design consultations (lots of them!) and working on our live events.

Recently this has come to include creating marketing strategies and designing new product ranges for Qube Luxe, my lockdown startup, offering ‘luxury decor in a box’. Immersing myself in the world of e-commerce has been a huge learning curve for me, but this is my way of bringing my designs and creations to the world and helping as many people as possible create extraordinary memories.

I’m constantly learning and developing myself, so my week usually consists of some kind of training where I’m a participant. But these days it's often me doing the mentoring, with the launch of the Luxury Event Business Hub which I started during lockdown, where I support and mentor other events businesses to grow and scale into the luxury events market.

As you can see, I can keep myself busy and that’s why having a good work life balance is now more important than ever. Over the past few months, I’ve been working hard to make sure that I have the most incredible support team around me. We have the inimitable Kim Drinkall now heading up Qube Events, our luxury decor company. Kim has been with the company for nearly 10 years and I couldn’t be prouder to have her leading our events team, which includes Steven Newall, Nicole Kennedy and Emma Wallace who has recently joined us from Lancashire Cricket Club, as well as our 12-strong staff of amazing individuals.

I'd also like to give a special shout-out to Georgia Sinclair, who undertook an internship with us as part of her Events Management degree at the Leeds Beckett University, and I'm now proud to say has joined the team as a full-time member of staff.

I’ve been working hard to bring everything together under one roof, and this is where the launch of Debbie Marks, the brand, comes into play. An exciting move for 2021 and beyond, the Debbie Marks brand is all about extraordinary living’ and making the most out of life's most special celebrations. This now encompasses Debbie Marks Events – a dedicated events agency for my most elite clients planning luxurious creative weddings, parties and corporate events (decor facilitated by the Qube Decor Group of course!).

The industry has changed forever post- COVID. No more boring events, parties or dinners; we’re now living in an experiential world where our clients want more. They want to experience the extraordinary, and that’s exactly what I’m on a mission to do.