We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley Ewing a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashley, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We are a mother daughter duo and started our first party decor/rental business, EmKay Creations, in 2022. We spend a lot of our time setting up decor for clients at different venues all across the DFW metroplex, and ultimately we knew that opening a venue of our own was the dream. We had absolutely no clue where to start, but we started looking around at spaces online and found the perfect spot for what we wanted in an event venue. We wanted a big space that people could really make their own, but a building that also already had character and charm. We looked at one space and immediately knew it was the space for us. We are located in a charming downtown area in North Texas and we’re surrounded by the sweetest community. We have the most supportive business owners around us that have helped us and encouraged us every step of the way. Their support is really what made us feel like the venue would thrive in the area. Hearing the excitement of the community is what made us excited! We love bringing joy to others and that is always the main goal with everything we do.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are Ashley and Julie, a mother daughter duo located in North Texas. Over our lifetime we have thrown countless number of events due to our large family – 7 kids and 2 granddaughters. After being told many times by friends and family that we should start an event business, we decided to make the jump and started EmKay at the end of 2022. We always knew that our dream was to open an event venue and at the end of 2024 we made that dream a reality by opening Riley’s Room Event Studio. Not only do we offer a space for you to host your event, we also can assist you with decor/rentals to really bring your event to life. We like to say that we are a one stop shop for all things party! We offer balloons, backdrops, white bounce houses, marquee letters/numbers and so much more. We find joy in getting to celebrate all of life’s special moments with our clients, especially when we get to come back for each big milestone. From a gender reveal, to a baby shower, to a first birthday party and all the rest to come.
We are so proud of both of the businesses we have built together, we truly never thought we would be where we are now and it’s all thanks to our clients, family and friends for supporting us!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We found the perfect space for our event venue and we were so excited to get going. Everything moved fairly quickly and seamlessly – we signed the lease, got the keys and thought we would be able to open in a month. After meeting with inspectors we found out that was not the case. We had to do some major construction to get us up to code. We honestly didn’t know if we were going to be able to move forward and were very worried about what the timeline would look like for our opening. We had already started advertising and getting the word out about the venue coming. Would this change the community’s excitement about us coming to town? How would people react to seeing our opening date pushed back so far? We were under renovation for about 4 months and finally opened at the end of October 2024. We had a launch party planned for a Saturday and got our final inspection approved the Wednesday before (definitely were crossing our fingers on that one!) We had an amazing turnout at the launch party and it seemed like everyone was even more excited to see the work we had put into the space. We are not people that like to have to sit and wait, but it was so worth it in the end.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

This is an easy one for us – we are a mother daughter team! Julie (mom) and Ashley (daughter) We have always been exactly alike and love getting to be creative together. If we didn’t see/talk to each other enough, we definitely do now! Fun fact, our businesses are also named after family members. EmKay is named after the family’s first granddaughter, Emberly Kay. Riley’s Room is named after Ashley’s daughter, Riley. We’re very big on family and love getting to honor the girls with our businesses.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rileysroomeventstudio.com
• Instagram: @rileysroomeventstudio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1QCMz96JLP/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Image Credits

Gabby Marie Photography