Free event planning checklist

How far ahead to plan an event

As far ahead as the room sells out. A venue with a handful of good dates can fill them a year ahead, and a restaurant’s back room can come together in a month. Vendors who work alone, like a photographer, a band or an officiant, hold one date at a time, and guests who travel need months of notice.

This table is the lead time the checklist uses for each kind of event. They are rules we use, not survey results, and a venue that books up early can ask for more. Change the date above and every one of them moves with it.

A shorter runway isn’t a disaster; it means fewer choices. With five weeks to go you take the caterer the venue already works with and the photographer who’s free, and skip tasks that need a long lead. The catch up now group shows which.

The order that works: date, venue, budget, guest list

Most people start with the guest list, then look for a room, then find the room costs more than the budget they hadn’t set. We run it the other way, because each step constrains the next.

1. The date and the venue, together

The room decides the date and the date decides the room, so shortlist both at once. Ask three venues about the same three dates, and ask your favorite to hold one in writing. Then check the room holds your headcount in the layout you want; a posted maximum is usually a standing number.

2. The budget

The venue quote can set the rules for food and drink, so a budget only becomes real once you hold one. Write the ceiling before you tour, and keep a reserve for what quotes leave out: service charges, tax, tips and overtime.

3. The guest list, as a range

You need a rough headcount to choose a room, not an exact one. Draft the list early and let the replies make it exact; the final number matters on the day the venue and caterer need it, which your contract states.

4. The vendors, scarcest first

Book whoever has the fewest substitutes first: the caterer if the venue lets you choose, then music, the photographer and anyone who needs a permit. Then comes the paper: insurance, the floor plan, the run of show, the BEO and the final count.

A sample six-month event planning timeline

This is the corporate preset, six months out, with the venue still to book: the plan the checklist above starts with, in short. Weddings and galas start earlier and parties later, but the shape is the same.

What people forget

The tasks that cost money when they’re missed are the unglamorous ones, and nearly all of them are the venue’s.

• The overtime rate and when it starts. Read the contract for it. An hour over can cost more than an hour of the room.
• Load-in and load-out. What time vendors may arrive, where they park, and when the room has to be empty. Ask the venue before you book the band.
• The final count is due earlier than the event feels. The date is in the contract, often a week or two out. The checklist puts it on the calendar.
• The certificate of insurance. Many venues want one from you and from some vendors, and a rejected certificate takes days to fix.
• Who clears the room. Name the person who takes down, takes out the trash and signs off with the venue manager.
• Feeding the people who work the event. Give the caterer a count.
• Tips and final payments. Put them in labelled envelopes the day before, with one person to hand them out.

Most of those turn up in one document, the banquet event order (BEO) your venue sends before the event: times, counts, bar, room set, staffing. Reading it line by line two weeks out is worth the time.

On the day, the free wedding day emergency kit checklist covers the bag of fixes, tools and paper that goes with you.

Day-of schedule: an event schedule template

A checklist says what to do and by when. A schedule says what happens at which minute, and who is doing it. You need both, and you build the second from the first: once the load-in time, the doors time and the end time are fixed, the rest falls into place around them.

Here is a sample for an evening dinner event. The free run of show template builds the same thing from your start time: add a segment, set its length and every time below it moves. For a wedding, the free wedding timeline template starts from the ceremony time instead.

How to run the plan with a team

A checklist with no owners is a wish list. Put a name beside every task in the Owner box, and check that each person knows they have it. A few habits we use:

• One person decides money and changes. Everyone else advises.
• One shared folder holds every signed agreement and receipt.
• The team meets for 15 minutes once a week, opens the Overdue and Due this week filters and leaves with their own tasks.
• Anything a vendor says by phone gets written in the Notes box that day.

The checklist saves in your browser, on this device, and isn’t shared live, so let one person keep the master. Send everyone else the CSV, which opens in Excel and Google Sheets and sorts by owner, or the calendar file, which puts each open task on its due date in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. If the date changes, download again and delete the old calendar entries first, because an import adds events rather than replacing them.

For venues and coordinators

Hand this page to your clients. It does the nagging you would otherwise do by email: the date to book the caterer, the date the certificate is due, the date the final count locks.

Your deadlines set the plan

A template can guess at most dates, but it can’t know yours. The final count, the menu lock, the balance, the insurance certificate, load-in and load-out come from your contract and decide when a client’s work is really due. Send the deadline sheet at signing and ask clients to enter each date with Add your own task.

One event, one dashboard

Most of what clients ask is “what do you need from me, and by when?” In MyVenueHQ the inquiry, the contract, the floor plan and the BEO sit on one event, so the answer is in the same dashboard as their contract and invoice. Draw the room with the free event floor plan maker, write the event order with the free BEO template, and when you want them on every booking, start free: it costs nothing for one venue and up to 10 events a month (pricing).

Add this event planning checklist to your website

Venues, planners and wedding blogs can put it on their own site for free. Paste this where you want it; it works in WordPress, Squarespace, Wix and plain HTML. Nothing is tracked about your visitors beyond page views.