Today we’d like to introduce you to Ellie Martin.
Ellie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
The Story of My Enchanted Events Venue
The story of My Enchanted Events Venue began years before we ever had a venue to call our own.
In 2013, I founded Tutu Tales Party Productions as a mobile character and party entertainment company. But even then, I knew I someday wanted a space of my own. While in college in Miami, I had managed an events venue, and the experience of creating a place where people could gather and celebrate stayed with me.
In June 2018, that dream finally had an address.
We leased a space that had previously been a thrift store and, before that, a garage door and awning business. It had mismatched floors, retail paneling, strange triangular offices, and needed to be almost completely gutted. We replaced ceilings, painted walls, installed doorways and flooring, and built an office area from the ground up.
Originally, I envisioned a children’s party place to complement Tutu Tales. But during construction, I began to recognize its potential for so much more. I wanted a space that could transform—a child’s birthday one day, an elegant shower or wedding the next.
That was when **My Enchanted Events Venue** was born.
The name was intentional. I loved that a client could say, *“My party is at My Enchanted Events Venue.”* For those few hours, the venue became theirs for their special occasion.
Making the Magic
We hosted our first event in October 2018, a Halloween celebration with Mickey and Minnie. Another Halloween event soon followed and eventually became our annual **Villains Night Out!**
Before long, we were hosting birthdays, baby showers, weddings, community gatherings, ticketed events, and celebrations of every kind.
One of my favorite things has always been watching the same room become something completely different. We’ve transformed it into castles, whimsical children’s worlds, elegant showers, spooky Halloween experiences, romantic weddings, glamorous milestone birthdays, dance floors, stages, and celebrations inspired by nothing more than an idea in someone’s imagination.
That was always the goal: to take something someone dreamed about and make it feel real.
As the venue grew, so did our team and our community. We hosted networking events that helped us build lasting relationships with bartenders, caterers, photographers, hair and makeup artists, and other local vendors.
And inside our own team, I had the privilege of watching people grow. I taught team members how to sell events, decorate, style celebrations, and even create balloon art. Eventually, many of them taught others. Behind every beautiful event were countless hours of answering inquiries, moving furniture, inflating balloons, setting tables, bartending, cleaning late at night, troubleshooting, and doing it all over again the next day.
My Enchanted was never something I built alone.
Surviving and Growing
Then, in 2020, everything stopped.
COVID shut the venue down for four months, and even after reopening, gatherings remained extremely limited. For a business built around bringing people together, the impact was enormous.
So we adapted.
Through Tutu Tales, we offered virtual character interactions and created activity-filled Kids Kits delivered to children’s doorsteps, sometimes personally delivered by their favorite characters for a brief, safe interaction.
We found a way to keep creating magic until people could gather again.
And when they did, they celebrated **big**.
2021 and 2022 became glory years for the venue. We frequently hosted three or four events in a single weekend, often with weekday celebrations too.
We reinvested in the space. My parents painted and installed more than 30 mirrors to create our signature mirror gallery. We modernized the stage, added greenery, and refined the venue into something more elegant while preserving its whimsical personality.
In 2024, we transformed our original office into a dedicated bar room and kitchenette, added a beautiful custom wooden bar, trained our team in bartending, and became licensed to sell beer and wine at our special events.
The venue continued growing up with us.
A Home Along the Way
My Enchanted also became much more than a place we rented to other people.
It became a home for Tutu Tales.
For several years, Tutu Tales grew into a separate warehouse of its own, but eventually returned to the venue, which once again serves as our headquarters today.
Over the years, hundreds of performers have passed through these doors for meetings, trainings, fittings, rehearsals, photos, staff parties, holiday celebrations, anniversaries, and countless moments together. For some, it was where they tried on their first costume, learned a new skill, met close friends, or discovered talents they didn’t know they had.
The venue became our workplace, creative playground, gathering place, and home base.
And some of my most treasured memories here have been personal ones.
I’ve had the honor of watching friends and relatives celebrate weddings, milestone birthdays, and other important moments within these walls. Then, in 2025, after years of hosting baby showers for other families, my own family and friends gathered here for my baby shower before I welcomed my second daughter.
It was incredibly full-circle.
I set out to build a place for other people to make memories, never realizing how many of my own would be made here too.
The People Behind It
There are so many people woven into this story—employees, performers, vendors, clients, friends, and family members who gave their time, talent, creativity, loyalty, referrals, and encouragement.
But I especially cannot tell the story of My Enchanted without my parents.
My mom and dad have essentially been my unofficial silent partners from the beginning. They have painted, built, installed, fixed, helped, encouraged, celebrated the victories, and stood beside me through the seasons when small-business ownership was anything but glamorous.
More than anything, they have never stopped believing in me.
There are pieces of them throughout this space, and I know without question that I didn’t build it alone.
The Next Chapter
The last few years have brought another kind of challenge. As the economy tightened, families became more cautious with discretionary spending, and luxury services like venue rentals became harder to prioritize.
We’ve continued adapting—expanding our décor and planning services offsite, regularly revamping our packages, finding creative ways to market, and relying on the incredible loyalty of returning clients. Through it all, we’ve maintained wonderful reviews and have continued welcoming hundreds of guests each year.
At the same time, my own life changed.
In 2025, I welcomed my second daughter, and after so many years building businesses around other families’ milestones, I found myself wanting to be more present for my own.
For the first time since signing that lease in 2018, I’ve had to consider what the next chapter of My Enchanted Events Venue might look like.
I don’t know the answer yet.
But I would love to see this place continue, perhaps alongside the right business partner—someone who can walk into this space and see what I saw all those years ago.
Not just walls, tables, a stage, or a bar.
Possibility.
We took an outdated commercial space with mismatched floors and strange little offices and turned it into a place where thousands of memories have been made.
We’ve survived construction, reinvention, a pandemic, economic uncertainty, changing trends, growing pains, and changing seasons of life.
I don’t know exactly what the next chapter holds, but I do know that something has to change.
After eight years of pouring so much of myself into this space, my life looks different now. My priorities have shifted, and I know I can’t continue carrying the venue in quite the same way I always have.
But I’m not ready to stop believing in what it can be.
I would love to see My Enchanted continue making dreams come true, whether that means welcoming the right business partner, eventually passing the torch to someone who sees the same possibility I saw in 2018, or discovering a next chapter I haven’t imagined yet.
Whatever comes next, I hope the lights stay on. I hope the room keeps transforming. I hope Tutu Tales continues to have a home here. And I hope many more people walk through these doors with a dream and leave with a memory.
What began as my dream of having a place of my own became a place that belonged to so many.
And perhaps that has been the most enchanting part of all.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, although I think that’s true of most small businesses that have been around long enough to experience different seasons.
Our biggest challenge came in 2020, when COVID brought the event industry to an almost complete stop. We were unable to operate for four months, and even after reopening, gatherings were heavily restricted. At the same time, understandably, clients wanted cancellations and refunds for events that could no longer happen as planned. For small event businesses trying to survive by offering reschedules and credits while still carrying rent and other overhead, that period was incredibly difficult. We were fortunate to pivot through Tutu Tales with virtual character visits, doorstep deliveries, and other creative alternatives until celebrations could return.
There have been plenty of other challenges along the way. We’ve navigated changing economies and periods when families simply had less disposable income for larger celebrations. We’ve watched competitors enter the market and sometimes introduce services or concepts very similar to things we worked hard to develop. We’ve experienced occasional streaks of false or misleading negative reviews, which can be particularly frustrating for a small business that relies heavily on its reputation and has worked hard to maintain strong reviews over many years.
There are also the less glamorous realities of maintaining a commercial space in Florida. Heavy rain, hurricanes and tropical storms, water intrusion, repairs, aging building components, and unexpected maintenance issues don’t make it into the pretty event photos, but they’re very much part of operating a venue.
And then there are the everyday challenges of entrepreneurship: staffing and training, rising costs, keeping packages competitive while remaining profitable, constantly marketing, adapting to trends, and learning when something that worked beautifully a few years ago needs to change.
Through all of those seasons, we’ve adapted. We’ve revamped packages, expanded our services, invested back into the venue, leaned on other parts of the business when necessary, and continued finding ways to serve our clients.
I think one of the greatest lessons this journey has taught me is that building something is only the beginning. Keeping it going requires just as much creativity, resilience, humility, and willingness to evolve—and sometimes recognizing when the way you’ve been doing something needs to change for the next chapter to begin.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about My Enchanted Events Venue?
My Enchanted Events Venue is a boutique event venue in Casselberry serving families and businesses throughout Central Florida. We specialize in creating highly personalized celebrations, from children’s birthdays and baby showers to milestone events, intimate weddings, corporate gatherings, and our own ticketed special events.
What really sets us apart is that we’re much more than a room rental. We can take an event from an idea to a finished celebration through our in-house décor, event planning, balloon styling, bar services, entertainment, lighting and audiovisual capabilities, and more. Through our sister company, Tutu Tales Party Productions, we also have access to professional character entertainment and performers, which has allowed us to create some incredibly immersive experiences over the years.
Transformation is probably what we’re best known for. Our venue was intentionally designed to be versatile rather than tied to one particular aesthetic. We’ve watched the same room become an elegant wedding, a whimsical children’s world, a glamorous milestone birthday, an adorable baby shower, a Halloween experience, a dance party, and everything in between. We love when a client comes to us with a theme, inspiration photo, or even just the beginning of an idea and trusts us to bring it to life.
We’re also intentionally intimate. We’re not a huge ballroom where a smaller celebration can get lost. Our space allows events to feel warm, immersive, and personal, and our team has always tried to provide that same personal approach to our clients.
Brand-wise, I’m especially proud that we’ve never been afraid to evolve. What began with strong roots in children’s entertainment grew into a venue capable of hosting celebrations for every stage of life. We’ve added décor and planning services, expanded into offsite events, built our bar program, produced original ticketed experiences, and continued updating our offerings as our clients’ needs and the event industry have changed.
I’m also incredibly proud of the reputation we’ve built. In an industry where people are trusting you with moments they may only celebrate once in their lives, that trust means a lot. Some of our greatest compliments have come from clients who return for another milestone, families who recommend us to their friends, and guests who first discover us at someone else’s celebration and later come back to host their own.
At its heart, My Enchanted has never been about simply renting four walls. We create experiences. We want someone to walk into the room and feel that, for those few hours, it was designed specifically for them.
That’s really the meaning behind our name, too. My Enchanted Events Venue was always meant to feel personal. When you’re celebrating here, it becomes “your” enchanted venue—and helping people turn the things they’ve imagined into memories they can actually keep is what I’m most proud of.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters most to me is the impact this business has had on people.
When I started, I was focused on building something successful and creating experiences people would love. More than a decade later, I realize the greatest measure of what we’ve built isn’t just the number of events we’ve booked or how much the company has grown—it’s the thousands of lives we’ve touched along the way.
We’ve been trusted by families during some of life’s most meaningful moments: birthdays, weddings, new babies, anniversaries, graduations, and milestones that only happen once. It’s an incredible privilege to know that our work has become part of so many families’ memories.
I’ve also watched vendors receive steady work through our events, build relationships with new clients, and grow their own businesses through opportunities that began with us. As a fellow small-business owner, being able to support other entrepreneurs has always meant a lot to me.
And then there’s our team. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to hire, teach, and mentor so many people—some in their very first jobs. I’ve taught people how to sell, work with clients, decorate, create balloon art, perform, lead teams, and handle the countless responsibilities that come with producing events. I’ve watched people become more confident, discover talents they didn’t know they had, move into leadership roles, and take those skills with them into the next chapters of their lives.
When I think about the thousands of clients, guests, performers, employees, vendors, and families who have crossed paths with our businesses since 2013, it’s humbling.
At the end of the day, businesses can change, spaces can change, and chapters eventually change too. But the experiences people had, the skills they learned, the opportunities they were given, and the memories families made don’t disappear.
Knowing that something I once dreamed up has had a meaningful ripple effect in so many people’s lives is what matters most to me—and it’s what makes me proudest of all.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.myenchantedeventsvenue.com
- Instagram: @myenchantedeventsvenue
- Facebook: /myenchantedeventsvenue
