Last night I received a message from a fabulous gal that I have had assist me at events on numerous occasions, she also happens to be a long time family friend. It really touched my heart. I am sharing this story not to toot my own horn, but to stress the importance of having a dedicated advocate the day of your event. And for event planners, the power of trusting your intuition and expressing it. As much as I wish I could say it wasn't the truth, there is no such thing as an event that runs "perfectly" smooth. There just isn't. But in most cases, if done properly, fires can be put other without a client knowing much or anything at all about it.
This past fall, I had the pleasure of planning an organizations retreat that I have planned for in the past. The kicker, I had 3 weeks to plan it, and it was on an island. To make matters even more interesting, the island had a month long event going on at the same time, which made resources very scarce. Hey, I'm always up for a challenge. As a planner, its your job to put together a "dream team" of vendors. On occasion and in this instance, the client had a couple vendors that they asked that I include. From the first time I did an introduction call with these grandfathered vendors, I knew that this really wasn't a good fit. But if a client decides its what they want, I would accommodate. Would being the operative word, as I learned a valuable lesson. I just knew to pack a full bottle of Excedrin migraine for the trip haha just kidding, but I should have :)
We pre-arranged everything for these vendors: travel, parking passes, ferry passes, transportation on the island, accommodations, food, you name it, it was taken care ahead of time and very detailed timelines were sent days leading up to the event. I was feeling pretty good. And to make things even better, the venue allowed for us to arrive early to set-up, venue was looking great and we were feeling proud.
The first evenings event was a fabulous Great Gatsby themed party in a famous venue with so much history and character, I was seriously in heaven. We had arranged fabulous performers throughout the evening, decor was looking amazing, everyone was calm, all that I had to do was slip on my beautiful gold gown and arrive just before the guests. Ha, that was wishful thinking. I sent my assistant to the venue just to check on things while I freshened up. I get a frantic call that there was an issue, one of the performers agents was demanding me there now. I hopped on the golf cart and made my merry way over, looking like a hot mess as we had just finished up a beach party. I arrive and one of the acts wanted us to completely tear down and rearrange the layout, it wasn't working for them. HUH, what?! This was 30 min prior to the guests arriving. As I am speaking with the banquet manager, and coming up with a compromise, the production team and the performers agent get into a screaming match and in front of one of the clients. I am a 5'4 blondie in the middle of a bunch of guys screaming at each other over chair and projector screen placement. I am not dressed and the guests are to arrive in 20 minutes. What I wanted to do was pinch their cheeks and put them all in timeout as they were acting like children, but I couldn't do that haha I took a deep breath and it was time to take back control of the situation. I calmly walk over and let them all know that one thing that I do not tolerate, no matter who you are, is disrespect. If you are going to be apart of one of my events, you don't have to like each other, but you will respect each other. I reminded them that I am in charge of this event and my job is to come up with a solution and we have 5 minutes to do it. We will do x,y and z. Performer agent, will this work for you? Production guy and banquet manager, can you make this happen? Great! I will be back in 15 minutes and you will start your performance. CRISIS AVERTED. My client smiled and winked. WHEW.
I arrive just before the guests arrive, the big band is playing, they sound wonderful and everything looks great, people are happy. Well, the performer decides that there is no way I would be back when I said I would so they make the executive decision to arrive over 30 minutes late. We had other performances throughout the evening with an extremely tight timeline to be able to accommodate what the main act wanted and it threw everything off. No biggie, we make it all work. Did it flow like I wanted, NO. Did the guests all enjoy the performance, NO. I am a perfectionist and I was pretty disappointed as I had prepared as much as one possibly could and what was going to be a really fun, beautiful evening, was hindered by one act that I knew from day one was not a good fit. My client was sweet and took responsibility, however I still beat myself up. Just leaves you with an icky feeling. So here is a bit of advice for both you as the client or you as the event planner:
Event Planners: Trust your instincts and if you truly don't believe a vendor is going to be a good fit, make the client fully aware of your reservations about using this particular vendor. Feel free to share my story as an example about what the outcome could be. And remember when an issue arises, STAY CALM. Your job is to come up with a solution that would be in the best interest of the client and to do so in the most seamless way possible.
Client: Hire a planner that you instill full trust in and trust their intuition. If you don't make an immediate connection with them, move on to the next planner. You will be compromising your events success if you don't fully trust your planner. Now this doesn't mean that you won't have differences of opinions. That's completely normal. But your planner should be an industry professional whom is trained to put your "dream team" together to ensure the success of your event.
