How to Become a Party Planner

So, you want to run a business with the purpose of helping people happily celebrate those important occasions in life? Why not become a party planner?

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Our extensive experience and expertise in providing insurance cover for events – both large and small – offer the credentials you are likely to seek when arranging party insurance. Whether you’re planning a birthday party, anniversary, wedding reception or street party – for twenty or for five hundred guests – we’ll ensure your public liabilities, equipment, and more are all covered.

To become a party planner, you need to take stock of the skills and talents you’ll be bringing to the role – and know how to hone those that might still prove to be more useful. For starters, you will need to be creative, organised, and client focused.

Your talents and the wider party planning industry

But you also need an appreciation of how those skills and talents are likely to mesh with or fit into the wider party planning industry. Try to learn all you can about how others are making a business of party planning, borrow from the best of them, but develop your own unique selling points to distinguish your business from the crowd.

Impeccable planning is the key. The best parties rely on incredible planning – the type of planning that not only bowls over your guests on that first impression but leaves them still wanting more.

Find your niche

There is nothing wrong with organising many different types of parties, but your existing skillset may lend itself better to some event types than others. For example, if you come from a catering background, you may wish to focus on heavily catered events such as weddings. Or, if you are very creative, then you may wish to focus on themed events.

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Branding

All this will be the knowledge that helps to build your brand. Building your unique brand will be essential to your ultimate success as a party planner. The brand starts with the very name of your business – it sets the tone for the services you offer, your marketing pitch, your logo, your website, and your presence on social media.

Formulate your business plan

A business plan will help you to understand just how your business is doing at any particular point in time, it’s prospects for future success, and the degree to which you are currently fulfilling targets and meeting benchmarks you established as indicators of success.

Although a business plan is there to offer guidance on ways of tweaking your performance to achieve shorter- and medium-term goals, it is not set in stone and can be – or rather, needs to be – flexible enough to adapt and adjust to your actual experience.

Your pricing strategy

A key component of your business plan, for example, will be your pricing strategy – how do you intend to charge for your party planning services? According to a flat-rate fee for each event, maybe, or an hourly rate, or even a commission-based pricing structure.

Whatever your strategy, be aware of its implications, stick to the measures you have chosen, and be sure to let your customers know the benefits of your pricing structure.

Our recent blog: Let’s talk about event budgeting: how to plan for your event covers event budgeting and planning in a bit more depth.

The regulatory framework

Know that you’ll be operating within the laws of the land and whatever regulatory framework is set up by the relevant local authorities and councils where you’ll be working.

This might involve applications for licences, availability for health and safety inspections, the registration of your business with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for income tax purposes and maintaining the appropriate business account with your bank.

Summary

It’s an admirable ambition to plan parties for others to enjoy as they reach important milestones in their lives. We’ve explained a little about what is likely to be involved in becoming a party planner – and we’ll be here to help protect and safeguard the business you choose to run.

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