On a well-run event, the planner spends the day watching. On a badly run one, they spend it answering the same six questions from eleven different people. The difference is almost always the run sheet.

Start at guest arrival and work outwards

Fix the moment guests walk in, then work backwards through bump-in and forwards through the event. Everything else has a time defined by that one moment.

Put a name against every line

A line with no owner is a line you are doing. This is the single fastest way to find the gaps in your own plan: go through the document and look for anything unassigned.

Write the cues, not just the times

Speeches, music changes, service, the cake, the first dance. Somebody has to trigger each of these, and “8:30 speeches” does not say who is holding the microphone or who tells the band.

Put the contacts on the same page

A phone number in another document is a phone number nobody has at the moment they need it. Every supplier, one list, on the run sheet itself.

Plan bump-out

Nobody writes this part and it is where deposits are lost. Who is taking what, when the venue needs the room clear, and who is doing the final walk-through.

The test

Give it to somebody who has never met you and ask whether they could run the event from it. That is not a hypothetical standard. It is the standard because the day you are ill is the day you find out.

Then print it. The one thing you can rely on at a venue is that the signal will be poor.