Event Planning Buyer’s Guide

Working with a special event planner

No matter how friendly or professional a special event planner appears, it can be difficult to take his word at face value – and you shouldn’t. To help ease your concerns, an event planner should maintain an event playbook throughout the planning process.

Event planners will use the playbook to detail all of their responsibilities for the upcoming event and track their progress along the way. This includes verifying that the venue is reserved for the selected dates, producing a list of the subcontracting services and rates, and managing the registration process.

The special event planner will keep you in the loop as they update the playbook so you know they are completing jobs on time. After the event, the planner submits the completed playbook to you for your records. You can then refer to the playbook if there are discrepancies with the billing or problems with specific aspects of the event.

Service contracts
The special event planner should also provide you with a contract that clearly outlines all their responsibilities before, during, and after the event. In the contract, the event planning company should outline all the costs and responsibilities, ensuring that there are no surprises when you receive the final bill.

One of the key elements of the contract is a service-level agreement which includes specific performance clauses. If the special event planner falls below a certain level of service, you are typically entitled to some form of discount or other compensation.

Contracts are usually set up on a per-event basis. However, if you are going to use the event planner to schedule multiple events, you may be able to negotiate a discount.

Post-event activities
Once the event is over, you should review your total bill and the final playbook to make sure everything is in order. This is also a great opportunity to sit down with your event planner and review the results of the attendee surveys and feedback reports to determine if there are ways to improve future events.

Regardless how your attendees felt about the event, you’re the one footing the bill so make sure you were satisfied with how it turned out. Don’t hesitate to let your event planner know if his or her work didn’t live up to your expectations. Since much of their business is built on repeat customers and referrals, they will want to keep you happy so you’ll consider them for your future event planning needs.

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