What You Need to Be a Great Event Planner

If you excel at throwing parties, it may be time to turn it into your actual career. Making the transition from planning parties and events for fun to planning them for your work takes a little effort, but you can do it if you put in the time. This is because a flawless event can make a huge difference for all the people attending. Here are a few of the most important things you need to take into account if you want to be an amazing event planner. 

Organizational Skills 

First things first, you need to have a killer set of organizational skills if you want to successfully make event planning your career. Planning a party or other event takes a huge amount of organization and you will need to take steps to ensure that nothing is forgotten or missed. You also need to make sure that everyone involved in the process knows what they need to do and how to do it. Being able to plan out every detail and delegate work as necessary will set you apart as an incredible party planner. 

If you aren’t sure your organizational tools are up to the challenge, you can do work to develop them. As your skills become stronger, you will be able to see the difference and work towards meeting your career goals. 

Creativity 

In many ways, most parties and events are very similar. But it is the creativity of the event planner that helps a party to be more memorable and stand out for the guests. It takes creativity to come up with themes, find beautiful décor, and transform a space into the perfect place for a particular event. If creativity is your strong suit, then party planning can be a great outlet for your creativity. And the creativity you show will work to make your events more impressive and grow your client base over time. 

Communication Skills 

So much of the work of an event planner is in talking to other people and making things happen. You need to be able to talk to your clients and figure out what they are really looking for, and this can be harder than it sounds. You also need to be able to express what needs to be done to the various people involved in making the party work. Great communication skills will also help you in gaining new clients and creating relationships with vendors so that your event planning job can become even simpler. Building communication skills starts with becoming a great listener and grows from there. 

Presentation Skills 

As an event planner, you also need to be able to make things look as good as possible. This is true for every element of the event from the decoration to the staff and even to the food. While you most likely will be having many of your events catered, it’s important to make sure that the serving utensils you use are beautiful and make a statement. Even simple things like utensils and flatware can help to bring a party to a new level. For example, bamboo skewers add visual appeal to your food and can impress guests. Taking care of these small elements of presentation helps the whole party to come together. 

Patience 

Sometimes all you want as an event planner is for everything to come together smoothly as quickly as possible. But although this would make things easier, it is usually not how things happen. Planning a great event takes time and patience to make sure that everything goes well. If you get stressed and frustrated every time things are running behind, it won’t help you to pull the party together. You can always work to increase your patience though; you don’t need to be perfect from your very first party. Make it a point to take a breath and give yourself time when you are feeling frustrated. 

Flexibility 

In addition to things taking longer than expected, they can also sometimes go a little bit wrong. Having the flexibility to adapt to new situations will set you apart as an event planner and help you to build a strong reputation. Things like changes in weather, problems with the caterer and many others can throw a wrench in your plan. But if you are flexible, you can deal with those changes and use them to make something even more wonderful. Work to build flexibility into your event planning so you aren’t caught off guard when problems occur. 

Drive 

It will take time and energy to get your event planning business off the floor. Having a strong drive to meet your goals will help you to make it through the difficulties of getting started. It can be incredibly challenging in the early days of event planning but if you keep your goals in mind and continually work towards them, they will become more real every day. If you ever find your drive is lacking, reevaluate where you are and come up with a plan to make yourself more successful. 

The Love of a Good Party 

More than anything, you need to love great parties if you want to make it as an event planner. This love of events will help you to find inspiration so you can continue to improve on the work you are doing. Take notice of things that work well at events and the kinds of things that are less successful. As you let your love of events guide you towards a better understanding of what can make a party great, you will become better at planning amazing things that are unexpected and fun. 

Building your career as an event planner is a huge step that will bring you towards your future success. Whatever goals you have in the event planning world, with these traits, you can make them become a reality. And with that sense of a positive future, you can continually work to make your life as an event planner the best it can be.

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