How to Manage Your First Event

As an event planner, your first event is probably the hardest one and it is understandable as to why. You have been able to learn so much as to how you put one on, but now your knowledge is put to the test. I know this is how I felt when I was interning for a company and my boss told me that I had this entire event to plan out all by myself.

Growing up my Mom was the Marketing Director for Hewlett-Packard and I was fortunate enough to go on her trips to check out venues for her events. I believe this is why I want to be an event planner.

I was so amazed by going with her to these venues and then finally seeing it completely turn into the most perfect event. I wanted to watch this happen under my watch so badly. And I finally had the opportunity to do so during my Marketing Internship.

Here are the steps I followed when managing my first event.

1. Who is the event for?

My first event was for the children of the employees of the company. So I was able to start off with knowing that I was making this event around children. I named the event "Bring Your Child to Work Day".

3. What is the event going to consist of?

What were the children going to do throughout the day? I ended up planning for the children to have multiple activities throughout the day. And I also decided this would only last half a day.

3. How many people were going to attend?

I sent out a Survey Monkey Questionnaire to ask the employees if they wanted their child(ren) to attend. After I received the results, I figured out there was going to be around 60 children in attending.

4. Food?

I knew the event was going to be at the first half of the day on a Friday but children love to eat so I made arrangements to have food at the office waiting for the children and also food for lunch. But if you are including food, don't forget to ask about food allergies.

5. The next thing is to get everything approved.

I was able to get everything approved by my supervisor and the CEO of the company.

6. Preparation

I had to order and try all of the activities we had planned but I did have some help from the other interns.

7. Execution

The final step is to know how to execute but also have a plan b, just in case anything were to go wrong.

Your first event will not go perfect. But that is okay! In fact, most of your events will never go perfectly as planned but it is a learning experience. Learn from your mistakes and you will be successful in whatever you do.

#event #firstevent