Marie Danielle Vil-Young looks back remembering with a chuckle how her colleagues commented on her “high heels and red lipstick” and penchant for fashion. After all, she was also wearing a sterile lab coat as a scientist at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Yes, four years before Vil-Young became a successful entrepreneur, founding À Votre Service Events in New York and New Jersey in 2008, she earned a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biochemistry degree and was a research scientist at the company where James Watson won the 1962 “Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine” for discovering the molecular structure of DNA.
“My lab was one of the leads on that project nationwide,” she reflects proudly. “I became a lab coordinator.” But despite loving her career cloning DNA and doing protein engineering work, which later included a stint at ImClone Systems and traveling the country for the National Institutes of Health, she needed a creative outlet. At first, this was expressed with her love of fashion and art, but then her wedding happened, and she discovered her love of flowers and event planning.
“I was doing very well as a scientist,” Vil-Young recalls, “but it felt limiting. There was more about me I wanted to explore. I became obsessed with the wedding planning and researching the wedding industry.” Her photographer and videographer noticed her looming talent, urging her to start her own business. Like the good scientist she is, Vil-Young didn’t just open a store with a shingle. She didn’t think she could just dive into the flower business without acquiring business and creative skills.
Step one, Vil-Young says, was identifying what she didn’t know. “I knew nothing about business,” she recalls. So, for the next year, she spent nights and weekends taking business classes. Simultaneously, she attended important floral gatherings like AIFD symposia. “You meet people in the industry and can ask questions,” she adds. She also watched tutorials from floral designers she admired including Kiana Underwood, Lewis Miller and Holly Heider Chapple.
In her local community, she went to women’s business groups. “Many of those women then because future clients and referred clients,” she says. “When you meet people in other fields, they also share data about what has been working for them.”
Vil-Young also knew that she had to learn which wholesalers provided the best products. With that in mind, she went to Ecuador to visit farms and forge relationships. “As a scientist, I’m interested in how bacteria affects flowers and how to control bacteria and climate control,” she shares. This, too, helped her foray into flower business, where she approaches planning all her events through a scientific lens, be it expertly managing precisely when her flowers will bloom—down to the minute—or masterfully calculating the square footage per guest count to maximize each event’s guest experience.
All these efforts collectively reaped rewards, and today, Vil-Young’s business of planning, coordinating and designing high-end weddings and events is booming. Not only did Martha Stewart compliment her on topiaries on her TV show, but publications ranging from Vogue to The Wall Street Journal have written about her work.
“There was an artist living in me,” she says. “Looking back, I believe my science knowledge helped me excel in this field. I know how to deal with corporations, how to communicate and how to say what you are thinking. I’m also data driven, which is important in this work. I’ve learned now to be closer to who I was meant to become.”
Today, in addition to her weddings and events business, Vil-Young has established an online retail shop, AVS Lifestyle, offering daily delivery of flowers and plants locally and shipping nationwide; flower subscriptions; and curated gift, home décor, bath and body, health and wellness, and gourmet items. She even offers a slate of floral workshops as well as private classes and coaching. Furthermore, she is a member of the Association of Bridal Consultants (ABC) and was the ABC’s New Jersey State Manager for a time.
Vil-Young’s journey may be unique in that her previous profession was as a scientist. But when you dig a little deeper into the flower world, many have had previous careers. In fact, say experts, flower-related jobs are one of the most popular subsequent career choices.
“Many of our students are coming here for a second career,” says Calvert Crary, owner and executive director of FlowerSchool New York and FlowerSchool Los Angeles, who himself transitioned to the flower industry in 2006 following more than a decade as a professional photographer, shooting mostly lifestyles and fashion. He also has owned three successful flower businesses in New York City.
Tyke Patriquin, administrative director of the Cass School of Floral Design in Watertown, Mass., estimates that as much as 30 percent of Cass students are looking for a new career. “We frequently have newly retired medical professionals and educators who are often ending their first careers due to burnout,” she says. “They are looking to start a new chapter in their careers where they can put their well-honed people skills to use, to bring people the happiness and positive emotions that flowers create.”
A survey conducted in late 2020 by The Harris Poll for Fast Company found that 52 percent of American employees were considering making career changes in 2021, with 44 percent having plans in place to make the leap. Although that survey was during the early stages of the pandemic, those numbers were closely consistent with data gathered in 2016 and 2018, prior to the pandemic, so it could be reasonable to assume that those numbers today would be similar.
This could explain the uptick in flower school enrollments. Patriquin says second-career students at flower schools say that working with “fresh foliaged living materials gives them fulfillment in ways they never experienced in their prior careers.”
For example, Danielle Harris, owner of Little Blooms Floral in Nashua, N.H., which specializes in creative and intimate weddings and events across New England, had a corporate career in aerospace manufacturing. “I was finishing my MBA, and I’m bad with free time,” she says. “I was going to sign up for a crew class but couldn’t do the swim test. Then I took a floral class thinking flowers are cool. Six weeks in, I fell in love.” Though Harris enjoyed the camaraderie of a big office, she embraces the peacefulness of working for herself and finding work/life balance.
After all, the No. 1 reason people want to change careers is to be in a job or field with a better work/life balance (56 percent), which is ahead of a higher salary (50 percent).
Millie Rochon, owner of Whitemoss & Twigs in Easton, Mass., was a teacher and now has a flower studio from which she exclusively designs florals for weddings and events. Tina DelRaso, owner of Petal & Ink in Boston, Mass., was a high-end spa manager and esthetician instructor. She now has a home-based business doing flowers for weddings and events, event planning and hand lettering.
Teresa (Terry) Godfrey, AIFD, EMC, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance floral designer and lead floral design instructor at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Md., was doing software development before segueing into flowers. “One of my friends at church asked if I did weddings after seeing my church flowers,” she recalls. Sometimes, as many say, the spark comes from different places.
Godfrey points out that no experience is wasted. “I knew how to work spreadsheets and price calculations,” she says, noting it’s an important part of the business as well.
“I was a high-school teacher,” says Paulina Nieliwocki, owner Blue Jasmine Floral in Berkeley Heights, N.J., who is a graduate of FlowerSchool New York. “Flowers made me happy.”
According to CNBC, a combination of mid-career stagnation along with more financial stability allows people to make career changes at the average age of 39. People start to reflect on their lives and seek alternatives. Plus, financial resources allow expansion and options.
The stats show that between ages 18 and 24, people change jobs an average of 5.7 times. The average job change between ages 25 and 34 is 2.4. From ages 35 to 44, the average decreases to 2.9 jobs, and from ages 45 to 52, to 1.9 jobs.
Furthermore, according to the earlier-cited survey by The Harris Poll for Fast Company, six out of 10 (59 percent) of middle-income American workers—those with annual household incomes between $50,000 and $75,000—consider changing their careers. This occurs with people trying to freelance or build skills to launch a new career.
A recent study by the American Institute for Economic Research also found that 82 percent of respondents had successfully switched to new careers after the age of 45, and most were successful in their new jobs.
Unlike others who took a huge detour from what they were doing, many branch out from complementary careers. This isn’t a surprise to Dawn Weisberg, who is the star behind Tularosa Flowers in Fallbrook, Calif. Before founding Tularosa, Weisberg spent 25 years designing everything from costumes and sets for film, theater and television in Los Angeles and New York City to working in more than 15 countries abroad. She also designed two nationally distributed lingerie lines and did commercial design for restaurants and private homes as well as landscape design.
“I started Tularosa Flowers in 2017 at the age of 45. It was terrifying to leave a career that I had trained for, went to school for and knew so well. But I believe we all deserve happiness in life, and that life no longer made me happy. I wasn’t finding creative stimulation in the work anymore,” she explains of her shift.
Starting as a freelancer to a florist, as something to try, she realized she had an affinity to flowers. “As soon as I got to the weddings, I realized it was just like a film, with many different vendors working collaboratively together, with very tight timelines in sometimes challenging environments to achieve the final product, I felt right at home,” she says. “This, coupled with my extensive design training and years of working with color textures and patterns, budgetary constraints, and leading teams, helped me make a smooth transition from the entertainment world to the world of weddings and quickly dive into the luxury end of large-scale floral design.”
Now her work has appeared on CBS; The Knot; wedding blogs Style Me Pretty, Once Wed, Ruffled and Green Wedding Shoes; and magazines including Brides and California Wedding Day—and even a cover for this magazine.
As many say, the floral work is much harder than expected. Transportation and physical labor are big parts of floral design. “People think you are just working with pretty flowers and don’t see all the carrying you have to do,” says Harris. But the rewards are worth it.
“Flowers have an innate ability to bring us joy by just looking at them,” says Weisberg. “It’s a primal response almost every person has when looking at flowers. No matter how challenging a job or clients may be, at the end of the day, we are still working with a beautiful and ephemeral product that brings joy to both ourselves and others. Knowing that we are contributing to life’s biggest milestones, seeing the joy on our couples’ faces and hearing the gasps from their guests when they see the flowers is the best feeling! Now I do work that actually makes a difference in people’s lives. What we do with flowers heightens the emotions of the day; it’s transformative work, and it makes my heart so happy!”
