Planning A Party? Start Here

Let’s say you want to throw a fantastic party, but you aren’t sure where to start. How you come up with the type of event you’d like to throw can happen in many ways, and some methods for designing the framework for your event are likely to feel more intuitive or creatively inspiring than others. Let’s take a look at some of the different ways you can start the process of creating an event.

Each of these frameworks for thinking about an event is a different lens that will be valuable for you throughout your planning process, and I recommend using them all every time you plan an event. However, which one you start with depends on what makes it easiest for you to start building a plan.

1. Iterative Improvement of Existing Models (mirroring what you love and evolving it to make it your own.)

When you are applying the lens of iterative improvement to your event, you are specifically looking at the structure of other events you’ve been to and love, and trying to mimic their structure within the context of your own work. This is akin to using genre-tropes when writing a work of fiction, or applying elements of the hero’s journey to your storytelling process. Understanding the structure of events you really enjoy attending, and iterating on them for your own event is something all producers do. None of us exist in a vacuum and reinventing the wheel is a waste of time when so many solutions, techniques, and well-refined practices are around to learn from.

This method is about learning from other events, not trying to duplicate or be a carbon-copy of another event. Focus on which elements and techniques you’ve seen in the world that help things run smoothly and translate to the most enjoyable experience for attendees.

2. Budget-Block Planning (the tetris model)

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Oftentimes, it’s easier to do creative design work when your budget is already really well defined, rather than the other way around. When you apply the lens of budget-block planning, you’re defining your budget categories and cost ceilings before you do anything else related to planning your event. Starting with this method means having a good sense of proportionate event costs right out of the gates, and those will depend a lot on the type of event you’re hosting. If you haven’t done things like select a venue yet, there will be some guesswork involved in estimating things like capacity and total budget, so give yourself some wiggle room. Always round revenue projections down, and price estimates up.

Approximate the size and price-per-ticket of your event, and divide your projected revenue into expense categories, such as venue booking, catering, entertainment, insurance, sound and lighting equipment, decoration, security, stage management, medical, logistical venue management crew, setup, strike, generators, and so forth.

3. Guest Experience Concept (starting with a very specific experiential goal)

This is the process of imagining a specific experience, or collection of experiences, you would like to provide for attendees. Whether that experience is fairly open ended like, I want guests to feel a sense of safety and belonging, or more specific such as wanting guests to feel like excited explorers on an alien planet, this is a great way to start designing an event. The more concretely you can imagine the experience you want to cultivate, the more you can start asking questions about how to provide that experience, which can in turn guide decisions about the event — from what time of day it should happen, down to what color lighting or floor plan you should use. Beginning here means reverse engineering from an imagined emotional experience, and exploring all the sensory and environmental inputs that could cause a person to feel a particular way.

4. Aesthetic Concept (starting with images and music that convey what you’d like to make happen)

This method comes from compiling a cohesive collection of sounds and images that sound and look the way you want your event to sound and look. It is similar to the Guest Experience Concept, but comes from the aesthetic perspective rather than empathizing with an imaginary emotional or narrative guest experience, so it may feel a little bit more concrete. If the pictures you use are images of parties, you can also understand how it’s related to the first lens, Iterative Improvement. Understanding how you want your party to look will help you do things like find a venue, determine scale, book performers, decide on a dress code, and using pictures and recorded sounds to communicate with your creative team can help you all get on the same page, as well as build excitement.

I have planned events that started from each of these places, you don’t need to always start with the same approach when you’re making plans.

Sometimes you’ll have an opportunity to throw an event in a space you’ve used before, with a consistent crowd size from previous events, so you’ll already have your budget-block plan when you begin, and preliminary brainstorming will look like filling in blanks on a spreadsheet. Sometimes you’ll get the idea to throw an event because of an emotional experience you really want to have and share with others (this is usually how I’ve planned my birthday parties), or you’ll attend a really great party and immediately the wheels will start spinning in your mind about what you’d keep and what you’d do differently if you ran the show. Or maybe, you’ll be looking through photos online and see an image you wish you could step inside of and invite your friends into.

Almost all of the circus shows I’ve put on over the years started out as music playlists, and evolved from sound through imagination and collective labor into live works on a stage. Your process will depend on the situation and what speaks to your creative and logistical thought process.