Careful where your event is!

I have been to so many parties of all sorts and could point out a dozen “no-no’s” from all of them in one way or another. Most of the time the top of my list is why in the world they had the event where they had it.

Why can’t we just think a little more about the guests, isn’t that what the event is really for? It’s hard to not think about the guests…the food, the seating, the location.  The last thing thought about is what is the true amount of guests that really are going to arrive, is there going to be almost 100% turnout or 50% turnout?  Have you made sure an RSVP is in place so you know exactly how many are going to show up?  The reason I say this is simple, atmosphere can make or break an event.

Overcrowd a room: If you overcrowd the banquet hall it will be stuffy and hard to move around and talk to each other, with music from a band or DJ it’s just plain annoying.  What you will notice is that people will migrate out of the room to a quieter area for good conversation, or they will go outside if the weather is nice.  All of this will ruin good audience participation for anything you or the music host wants to do.

Undercrowd a room: If you undercrowd a banquet hall it will subliminally cause your guests to feel uncomfortable.  Put a bunch of people into a huge room with too much space and they will get into ‘clicks’ or little groups spread out to corners, your party gives off an effect like not a lot of people showed up.  This can also cause the DJ to need to play the music louder to reach the whole crowd and blowing away anybody close to the music thus causing them to move away to a corner at the back as well.  Don’t give people too much room to stray.

Different rooms and outdoors: I’ve seen this a few times and every time it was a failure for the party, having different rooms for people to go to or a bar outside of the party room.  If you plan to have fun things go on at your party please keep everybody in the same room.  If you don’t then don’t plan a chicken dance, a speech, a ceremony, or barely even a dance.  People will be so far away from the action you will need a runner to gather people back into the room again.  This goes the same for allowing people to enjoy an outdoor deck for some fresh air.  This sounds beautiful and CAN be, but the beauty may cause your party to break up and send your guests off to do their own thing and stay outside for the night.  If you do that then you might as well move the DJ to the outside cause that’s where your guests will be.

Recap:

1) RSVP, RSVP, RSVP – Know just how many are coming.

2) Reserve a room that will be filled to 3/4 capacity of the guests you know are coming.

3) If you have ‘fun things’ going on during your event, keep it all in 1 room.