When you’re planning a celebration, an event-planning checklist is one the most important tools you can use to make sure your event is a successful one. Though it might seem like a small detail, a structured checklist really will help you stay organized and keep you on task as you plan, and best of all, it will ensure that you don’t forget any important details.
When you go about creating your checklist, there are some things that are just more important than others! Specifically, in our opinion, the following three items are the most important things when it comes to planning your event!
Venue
When planning an event, your first and foremost concern is the “Where?” meaning, if you don’t have a venue chosen, your first priority is to create a checklist that highlights all the most important things you’re looking for in a venue. Things like size, location, capacity, lighting, and, of course, price are all incredibly important considerations to take into account. In fact, once you lay out all of your expectations and the requirements of your event, you will likely have a much smaller pool of possible venues than you started with.
If, on the other hand, you have already chosen your venue, you can create checklists to ensure everything venue related will be taken care of before the event. And, this might seem like a small thing (and an impossible scenario) but could create a huge headache if there’s any misunderstanding. It is crucially important to make extra sure that you and the venue manager have the venue booked for the correct and same times, and that all the details of the contract are correct!. It’s also important that you do research in your own municipality to ensure you have the proper event permits (if you need to) in place well before your event.
Logistics
Logistics are very important when it comes to the flow and overall success of your event. One logistics mistake, and you could bring your event from truly exceptional to simply average. So, creating a logistics checklist is a great way to make sure the coordination and execution of all your chosen event elements. This part of party planning isn’t glamorous, but it’s important! Logistics directly affects your guests’ experience of your celebration. Some of the important considerations that should be included included on your checklist are:
- Traffic flow and parking & coat check
- Distance from parking to venue
- Timeline and guest arrival and departures
- Creating clear signage (people like to know what to expect)
- Clarifying vendor expectations and set-up/tear-down times
- Event Floor planning and seating planning
- Event scheduling and timeline
Guest list and invitations
Creating the perfect guest list for your event and sending ‘keep the date’ cards & invitations takes both time and patience, but doing the work up-front will save you from many headaches down the line. Truly, in our experience speaking to clients, one of the hardest aspects of this part of planning is dealing with the paranoia that you might forget to invite someone important. And, you definitely don’t want to do that!
A guestlist checklist, and giving yourself lots of time to complete this task, will help to ensure this doesn’t happen! On your checklist, you can include a list of all your guests and all your invitations. That way, if you forget to create or send an invitation, you can easily correct your mistake because your checklist will remind you!
I also suggest letting other organizers and guests of honor go over the event guestlist to ensure that you haven’t missed any important connections or people, before you get to the task of preparing your invites!
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