How to start an event planning business

A complete guide to going from idea to your first paid booking, and then to a business that runs more than one event at a time. There is almost nothing to buy, which makes this one of the cheapest real businesses to start and one of the easiest to start badly.

Is event planning worth starting?

People will always mark the important days, and companies will always need somebody to run the ones that matter to them. You do not need a degree, premises or a loan, and there is no stock to buy, because what a client is paying for is your judgment and your attention on a day they cannot repeat.

The catch is the one nobody warns you about. This is a business with a very low barrier to entry and a very high barrier to doing well, because the parts that decide whether you make money (the fee model, the contract, the run sheet, the supplier terms) are all invisible from the outside. Most people who quit did not run bad events. They ran good events for a fee that did not cover the hours.

Step 1: Choose your market

Trying to be available for everything makes your marketing vague and your first year exhausting. Picking a market makes both simpler, and none of these is a permanent decision. Here are the three most planners start in:

Most people take their first paid booking in private celebrations, because the budgets are smaller, the lead times are shorter, and nobody expects a portfolio of forty weddings. Corporate work is where the year becomes predictable, and it is worth going after earlier than most planners do.

Step 2: Register and insure the business

Before the first paid booking, get three things in place: register the business and the name you will trade under, choose a simple structure to start with, and arrange public liability insurance. The insurance is not a formality. Venues ask to see the certificate before they will let you set up, so without it you can be hired and still be turned away at the door.

There is very little to buy. Tick what you will actually need to see a realistic launch budget:

Want the full launch checklist, in the order the steps actually have to happen? That is Unit 2 of the course, and there is a free planning checklist too.

Step 3: Set your fee

This is where new planners lose the most money, and they lose it politely. They quote a number that sounds reasonable out loud, then spend ninety hours earning it. The fix is to price the event two ways before you send anything: as a share of the budget, which is what the market understands, and as your own planning hours times a rate you can live on, which is the floor you must never quote below.

Work a real event through the calculator:

The course turns this into a method you can apply to any inquiry, and there is a price list template so your packages read as decisions rather than as guesses.

Step 4: Win your first bookings

Advertising is the slowest way into this industry and almost nobody's first booking comes from it. The work comes through the people who are already standing next to your future clients:

• Go and meet venues. Every venue is asked "can you recommend a planner" most weeks, and most keep a short list. Getting onto it costs a coffee and a conversation.
• Meet the suppliers who work the same events. Photographers, caterers, florists and celebrants all refer, and they refer to whoever made their last job easier.
• Build a portfolio before you have clients. Assist on somebody else's event, coordinate one for free for a cause you care about, or organize a styled shoot. Unit 6 covers all three, and what to photograph.
• Answer the inquiry properly. Most planners lose bookings at the reply, not the price. A same-day answer with two real questions in it beats a brochure.
• Ask for the review while they are still happy. The week after the event, not three months later.

Step 5: Run the event so it earns the next one

Your first clients are your marketing. What turns them into referrals is not flair on the day, it is that nothing went wrong that they noticed. The document that does that work is the run sheet: a minute-by-minute schedule that every supplier has, so the florist knows when the room is free and the band knows when speeches finish.

The second document is the brief, signed before anything is booked. Almost every argument in this industry is a disagreement about what was agreed, and a written brief ends it before it starts.

The free event timeline and run sheet template is the one to start with, because it is the document you will use on every single event.

Step 6: Grow into a real business

Once you are booked, growth comes from four moves: raise the fee, win the corporate and annual accounts that rebook without a pitch, package the service so it can be sold more than once, and bring in on-the-day staff so two events in one weekend stops being impossible. The last one is what turns a very demanding job into a business.

The Fast Track course covers marketing, supplier negotiation, systems and hiring in depth. For what the numbers can look like, see how much event planners make.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Quoting before you have costed your hours. The single most expensive habit in this industry, and it is invisible until the event is over.
• Working without a signed brief. Every scope argument is a brief that was never written down.
• Skipping public liability cover. One incident without it can end a young business, and a venue will ask for it anyway.
• Keeping the plan in your head. It works until the one day you are ill, and then it does not exist.
• Never asking the venue for work. The referral you did not ask for went to somebody who did.

Your 30-day action plan

1. Week 1: Pick the market you are going after, choose a name (try the name generator), and register the business.
2. Week 2: Arrange public liability cover, decide your fee model, and draft the service agreement you will actually send.
3. Week 3: Put up a one-page site with a way to inquire, then introduce yourself to five venues and five suppliers.
4. Week 4: Take a first booking, even a small one, and run it with a written brief and a real run sheet. Photograph it, and ask for the review.

Follow it and the first booking is realistically inside a month. Doing it with the documents, the fee method and a credential behind you is what the courses are for.

Frequently asked questions