Tips to flex your budget skills - The SD Event Planner Issue #3

Tips to flex your budget skills - The SD Event Planner Issue #3?

April 7, 2022

Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me. I always hope to bring useful tips, advice, and stories to your inbox every two weeks tailored to the busy event planner or professional. If you know others who may find this newsletter helpful, please forward to them and invite them to subscribe here:?https://bit.ly/sdeventplannersnewsletter.?

Two weeks ago, I talked about the basics of creating an event budget for you and your client. Event budgets are a perfect way for you to flex your expertise and work alongside your client to make a financial plan you both agree to.

Let’s talk about why event budgets are important, the benefits of making one, and how exactly to go about writing one up. Let me know what you think! I’d love to hear from you; respond to this email with your thoughts!

?The benefits of event budgets

• Event budgets keep your event on track. You can always refer to them to understand your client’s priorities and how to meet their expectations. The event budget is a vital tool to guide your planning, ordering, and organizing.
• Event budgets help you estimate what exactly you need to charge your client in order to be fairly compensated for the project. If you write a budget that is relatively low but your client is expecting a complicated and extravagant event, you ultimately won’t be paid what you’re worth. Effective budgets prevent that from happening altogether.
• Event budgets help you to see potential opportunities for partners and sponsorships to help fund part of the event. This is a great way to take some of the pressure off your client and can be super helpful to make the event even better.
• Event budgets keep you organized! They help you focus on the task at hand and help you prioritize accordingly.

A step-by-step guide?

First, determine your event strategy and create a high-level plan

You need to look at your event goals from a bird’s eye view. What really matters to your client? How can you help them achieve their dreams on a basic level? This is a perfect time to brainstorm and really hash out all of your client’s ideas for the event.

Second, estimate your costs

Starting with all your big bucket items (food, accommodations, etc), start listing out each line item you’ll need to price one by one. Take your time with this step! It’s important you don’t forget anything. Late budget surprises that were not anticipated in the beginning can definitely ruin any good event!

Third, finalize your budget

This is the step where you do your research. Start finding potential vendors, venues, caterers, and make connections with them. Ask for quotes and try to get as specific as you can with these numbers. List them all next to each line item. Once you’ve gotten everything filled out, you’ve got a finalized budget!

If you’re looking for a special vendor or venue, that is exactly what SD Event Planners is building! South Dakota is big, but small and very connected at the same time. SD Event Planners wants to be the one stop resource to connect you with vendors and help you with your next event. Visit our website today?at?https://www.sdeventplanners.com!

Remember, event budgets are always subject to change. They’re just meant to act as a guideline to keep you on track and organized.

I hope this helped you. Thanks so much for reading!

Ellie?

Ellie Highstreet?

Owner and Founder

SD Event Planners?