Category: Party & Event Planning

Reasons Why Hiring a Corporate Event Planner is a Good Idea

Planning an event can be really cumbersome. You have to get the budgeting right, the up-to-date management in terms of arranging resources, scheduling and rescheduling your day plans and so on. In particular, if you are planning a corporate event, it is best to say that it has to be on-point. You cannot go wrong with the details because these meetings are very crucial for business growth.

Meetings and incentives are an important part of this planning process. When you rope in a corporate event planner for conducting a successful conference or convention, it ought to be thought through. Here are 5 good reasons for you to hire a corporate event planner:

1. Theme selection

When you skim through any event’s invitation, one of the things that must grab your attention is the theme of the conference. Now, when we say it is a medical conference, for instance, the foremost thing that you must talk about is the theme of the event and the need for it. Event planners will guide you in arranging meetings and incentives which would help you dive into this process right away!

2. Customization

Every meeting and incentive that you plan will require different sets of customization, mainly because each of these will be set in a different location, they will have a different set of target audience and so on. Therefore, the best-chosen expert for your event will customize it all for you.

3. Agenda for the meeting

There is a difference between the theme you choose and the agenda you set, and only an expert can tell you that. When you have called your associates for an event, they are looking for an agenda that suits their wants. Providing them with that advantage is in the hands of your planner.

Strategic planning

Strategic planning management is a legit requirement if you want the convention to be successful. Engaging your customers, handling the registration process, and managing your customer queries are things that event planners will take care of. In that sense, you can be carefree.

Budgeting

Money is a business. You want value for money and at the same time, you want your customers to be happy with the convention. That’s where your best-chosen expert for the event comes into the picture. They budget and account for your needs and make sure those are fulfilled.

The event planner can run things efficiently

The beauty of hiring a professional to handle any corporate event is that things are run efficiently. There are no unnecessary delays, the food is served on time, and the event flows fluidly from start to finish.

Develop & Execute Your Vision

Is this your first time planning a big corporate event, or throwing a fundraiser for a cause close to your heart? The first thing to do when you’re planning an event is to think about what you want it to look like and how you want it to feel. If you’re going for a fun, relaxed networking event, then your vision will likely be a little more casual than say, a super-official government conference. An event planner can help you decide on what you want your event to look like and help make it happen.

If you already know exactly what you want for your event, an event planner can connect you with the right vendors and help you bring your vision to life!

Navigate the Industry

The world of events is vast and expanding, which means there are a ton of vendors who would love to be hired for your event. From photographers to furniture rental companies, venues to caterers; it takes a team of professionals to put on an event. Want a caterer who can prepare a menu that connects to the mission of your non-profit organization? Event planners will know which vendors to recommend to you in order to build the best team possible.

You can save money

It may seem counter-intuitive but you can actually save big when you hire an events planner instead of doing all the works on your own. As it is, event planners have a wide-reaching network of suppliers who can provide the different requirements of a corporate event, which includes the food, audio-visual set-ups, invitations, physical arrangements, venue, and the like. A good event planner can strike the best deals and secure discounts that could become your savings.

You can save precious time

Planning an event, doing the necessary arrangements with suppliers, and overseeing the actual event can eat a chunk of your time. You may opt to create working committees from among your employees but you run the risk of affecting their daily productivity. If your company has particularly tight schedules on deliverables, it’s a wise move to just hire a professional event planner to take care of everything for you. Whatever time you can save from not doing all the legwork on your own, you can devote to corporate matters to improve productivity and profits. It’s a win-win situation.

You can avoid potentially embarrassing oversights

Nobody wants to hold a particularly big corporate event only to get shocked by some glaring oversights due to poor planning and execution. These might include some guests without seats, food that is not commensurate to the number of expected guests, and an audio setup that sucks, and the list goes on. With a professional event planner taking care of things, you can avoid such potentially embarrassing slip-ups since the service provider is well-versed with the intricacies of such delicate events. If you have a lot of VIPs coming in, this is more than enough reason to really hire an event planner.

What Does An Event Planner Do?

Event planning, as a profession, sometimes seems like it is shrouded in mystery. Some believe that the mystery aspect simply covers up the fact that it’s not a real profession at all – a pseudo-profession, perhaps. And at first glance, it can definitely seem that way. Event planners charge you to essentially throw a party, something you could do on your own, right? Hire a caterer, hire an AV company, secure a venue, all things that seem easy enough.

If you can do it all on your own, why hire someone to do it? Depending on your event planner, hiring them to take on the planning aspect of your event or party can be the best money you ever spent. Sure, you can do it all on your own, lone wolf style, but why take on all of the added stress? Plus, an event planner will likely be able to pull off something even more extraordinary than you could have imagined.

The biggest hurdle to hiring an event manager is the cost. But if you’re ready to release the reigns of your event to a professional, then it’s important to understand exactly what you are paying for. Any event planner worth their weight in confetti should be doing the following things for you.

Event Planner Tasks

• Coordinate speakers and/or VIP guests. If your event will have speakers or other VIPs, the event planner will work with you to help secure their presence as well as arrange their travel schedules and accommodations. The event planner will ensure that the speakers or guests arrive at the venue at their scheduled time and will arrange for any special treatment while they are at the event. They will also plan their event schedule

• Secure a venue. One of the most important tasks of an event planner is to scout various locations and then secure a venue for the event. The event planner will ensure that the venue can accommodate your guests or attendees as well as be logistically ideal for any activities or mini-events you have planned. They will work with the leasing agent to ensure that the space is ready to go on the day of the event and that everything falls within the scope of the contract.

• Hire all third party service providers. Most large events depend on many different third party service providers to ensure that things run smoothly. Everything from the food to the sound and music are sourced through third parties (caterers and AV service providers, respectively). Researching, interviewing, and hiring all of these providers can be a long and exhausting process, so having an event planner on hand to handle all of the work can be a huge weight off of your shoulders.

• Arrange all decor, swag, and informational materials. The event planner will ensure that all decor, swag, and informational materials are selected, ordered, and distributed to attendees and guests. This process includes hiring more third party service providers as well as making a lot of choices are far as what guests will want or need. The event planner must also be cognizant of the budget during this task.

• Create and organize the event schedule. The event schedule is a big part of whether or not an event will run smoothly. The event planner is in charge of understanding and anticipating the needs of attendees and then creating a schedule that fits what those needs are. The event planner will then create and disseminate a schedule that best fits the needs of those attending and then put measures in place that ensure things stay on schedule when event day arrives.

How Many Photos Should a Wedding Photographer Give Their Client?

For new wedding photographers or clients looking to see what is “normal”, it’s a common question to wonder how many photos should be delivered with the wedding photo gallery. For a standard 8 hour day of wedding photography, this means a photographer should expect to pass along 400-800 photos to their clients.

For more on how we arrive to this number, read our thoughts below!

Quality, Not Quantity

In theory, having a lot of photos can seem like a good thing. But, there is certainly a point where the number of photos can be excessive – especially when they seem redundant. At the average wedding, combined we take roughly 4,000 photos. As a solo wedding photographer, we take about 2,000 images individually. Most clients would not want all 2,000 or 4,000 of these pictures. That’s crazy! If you have someone looking to get all the RAW images or something – we would suggest steering clear. We’ll cover the why of this in our next section. Ultimately – you could deliver less wedding photos than average and still have super happy clients if the photos are all great.

Photographers Cull Their Photos

Remember the 4,000 photos we just mentioned that we take during a wedding day? When we get home, we upload them to our computer, then we cull them down to just the “keepers.”

There are plenty of reasons why we want to scale back the images we have taken. These include:

• Removing photos that are unappealing (ie: people making weird faces, poor lighting, etc.)
• Taking out repetitive images (ie: too much reception dancing photos, too many walking down the aisle shots, etc.)
• Removing out of focus and poorly exposed images

This culling process is essential to really any digital wedding photographers workflow. It’s easy to be trigger happy and shoot a lot of pictures – so reducing the number of images you’d want to share with your clients in the end product is key to this process.

Get the Images the Client(s) Want!

While it’s good to know how many photos should be reasonably expected, knowing that you are to deliver ~400-800 photos for a standard wedding day only tells part of the story. In truth, most clients want a good distribution of images so they encompass ALL of their wedding day effectively. If you provide 5 getting ready photos and 200 reception photos, it may seem that something is a little off. Keep this in mind when photographing the wedding. And of course, before the wedding day, consider reaching out to your client(s) directly and asking them what is most important.

Set Your Prices So You Can Live

One of the BIGGEST MISTAKES of any small business owner is setting prices just based on what you feel people will pay you OR when comparing your service with someone else.

Let’s face it – if you’re wondering what to charge, you’re probably starting off by looking through Pricing pages of other already established wedding photographers. The thought process probably goes like this…”If they can charge that much money, so can I!”

Reality is very different – and your prices should reflect your personal reality.

This starts with setting prices that allow you to have enough money to live the life you want to live. You should be able to earn enough so you can pay your rent, bills, grocery shopping, and so on. It might be the case that you don’t need to charge the sky high prices of your competition – and can move towards those numbers over time as you become more “in demand”.

Note: when you just start off in wedding photography, your prices will be low. This is expected, and convincing people to pay large sums of money for your service requires a quality portfolio

Questions a wedding planner should ask you

Are you hiring a wedding planner? How did you decide on THE ONE?

1. What’s your budget, how many people are you inviting, and what’s your dream venue?

These might be three questions rolled into one, but a good wedding planner will want to know your answers to these questions so they can get a sense of not only what kind of wedding you want to plan, but if you can realistically afford it.

“I just met someone with a $200,000 budget who wanted a four-day event in the Hamptons. After listening to them, I said there’s no way they could afford what their vision is,” Blum says. “Or let’s say you want to invite 500 people and have it in a garden. It’s unlikely you’re going to find a garden that’s big enough.”

Another important tip? “Don’t find someone who just agrees with you all of the time,” Blum says. Otherwise, you may find yourself having to reimagine big details in the middle of the planning process—after you’ve had your heart set on them.”

2. Do you have any vendors in mind?

“If a planner tries to talk you into their vendors at the first meeting—such as saying, ‘When are you scheduled to look at The Plaza?’—they’re probably getting referral fees,” Blum says. “If the planner is forceful and not a good listener, that’s an issue.” Asking if you have any vendors in mind (and their response when you give them the answer), will let you know if they have a hidden agenda. Ideally if you do have a photographer or DJ you love, they’ll be on board with getting them on board.

3. How involved do you expect a wedding planner to be?

Whether you want a wedding planner to handle every last detail and you just show up at the wedding, or you want someone you can collaborate with the entire way, a wedding planner should find out what kind of wedding planner you’re looking for. Blum says not only does it help her plan better, but it’s also how she determines a price tag. According to LearnVest.com, the planner who primarily offers advice along with day-of wedding coordination “could run you $3,700,” while “fees for a full-service professional shoot up to more than $5,000.”

4. What weddings have you been to that you didn’t like?

“People don’t usually even know what their priorities are until you ask them specific questions,” says Blum. “For instance, if you hated the food [at another wedding], that means that you’re someone who pays attention to food. Or if all you talk about is the flowers, it becomes obvious that you’re really interested in decor.”

Questions Wedding Photographers Should Ask Their Clients

How many guests are invited to the wedding?

Knowing a rough number of guests that are expected to attend the wedding will help you to plan how you will approach photographing the event. It may also help you determine whether or not you need a second photographer or not. In some cases, knowing the number of guests that are attending the venue will also help you determine the price that you wish to set for your services as it can significantly change the difficulty of the work that you carry out and your costs.

Do you have a list of certain poses and photographs that you specifically want to capture?

Some couples will have seen the wedding photographs from one of their friends, or from a famous wedding online and may want to recreate a similar photo for their own wedding. It might help you if you make a checklist of all the poses, angles, and moments that they specifically want to capture so you can make sure that you’re ready for them.

Would you like to take some photographs prior to or after the wedding?

The time that you’re able to spend with the couple before the wedding will not only help break the ice but also understand how they handle themselves in front of a camera so you can better manage yourself (and them) on the day of the actual wedding.

Will there be someone apart from the bride or groom at the wedding that will help me arrange things?

Unless you’re photographing the wedding of a family member then it is almost certainly going to put you in some awkward situations when you are trying to get the attention of a group of people but they can’t seem to hear you. A member of the family, which isn’t as stressed as the bride or groom themselves, that can help you manage and set up the group photos, give you guidelines at certain moments and more is going to be invaluable in ensuring you can capture the best possible photographs.

Your wedding and uplighting

When it comes to your wedding, we know how tough it can be to manage your budget. Here’s an easy list to help you decide if you need uplighting for your wedding.

You may need uplighting if…

• Your wedding is in an ugly venue. Couples pick venues for dozens of different reasons. Couples sometimes pick venues for sentimental reasons. Sometimes they pick them based completely on the location. Sometimes a venue has fantastic food, but just needs a face lift. Uplighting can do wonders for a bland slab of drywall or an unimpressive corner, tying it into the look of the rest of your party instead of sticking out.
• Your wedding is in a beautiful space. If you’re getting married in a remarkable old hotel, a modern gem or a building with some history, lighting will often highlight the beauty in an already impressive space. Architectural features like columns, windows, and ceilings can be lit for ambient effect. Materials like unfinished brick and plaster often look dynamic and beautiful when uplit. Many brides will see a few pictures of poorly-designed uplighting looks and become discouraged. Like most things, if done wrong, uplighting can be tacky. If designed correctly, uplighting will take the look of your venue to the next level.
• Your wedding is in a familiar space. Increasingly more couples are using old barns, non-conventional event spaces, or just using their parents back yard for their weddings. Uplighting creates a new perspective on familiar items. This adds a flash of drama that is crucial in an otherwise ordinary space.