My Method for Planning Successful Events
On to-do lists for a bouquet party…
I love to-do lists, and I love marking tasks as DONE… so –naturally– my method for planning events involves several lists, and today I will go through each of them. There are four: Elements, Timeline, Food, & Basics.
The main to-do list for any event is the ELEMENTS list. This is a list of –of course– every element needed for the party. Although it changes throughout the planning process –because some things are no longer needed, while others are added at a certain point– it provides an excellent foundation that allows me to keep track of what is still missing, what has arrived, and what still needs to be selected.
This list is divided into categories. For example, for this bouquet party, the categories were:
Flower Station: This section included everything guests were going to need to make their bouquets and take them home. Scissors, twine, containers, kraft paper… everything they would need from the moment they sat down to the moment they walked into their homes, because even the car ride with their bouquets was taken into account.
Flower stations for each guest, including the envelope with the letter from the birthday girl.
Which flowers will I pick all over again –if I am asked to plan a similar event– and which I won’t:
YES FLOWERS
Baby’s breath: forever and always… it does not die, it’s affordable, it’s beautiful. In my opinion it is the perfect filling. I also love that idyllic look it gives wherever she is. They are a little messy, though.
Button pom flowers: YES. They do not make any sort of mess, they last, they may be simple but are perfect for adding volume, and are cute enough. I personally love the green ones. For this particular event, I chose them in lilac.
Roses: I am not even the biggest fan, but roses, when good quality, last a ton. Although I will never be the one to go for an all-rose bouquet, I like how they look mixed with other flowers. Besides, they tend to be a crowd’s favorite.
Ranunculus: they made it to this list with hesitation. Ranunculus are beautiful. I may even say they are my favorite flower right now. However, they need to be super good quality. When not, they do not even last a day straight. At the wholesaler, there were two choices for ranunculus. You could go for a more expensive bouquet made of five strong, large ranunculus, or a more affordable one made of ten smaller ranunculus (they were still beautiful, just smaller… or so I thought). I chose the best quality ones for the decor and the smaller ones for the bouquet activity. Well…
Next day comes and the larger ranunculus were thriving, blooming, everything you wish a ranunculus to look like. On the other hand, some of the smaller ones were already droopy.
So, yes to ranunculus… but pick the best ones.
Dendobrium orchid: beautiful, long lasting, no mess.
Gerberas: always a nice and colorful addition for the fans. No mess and long lasting.
NO FLOWERS
Pink snapdragon: This flower is beautiful, but, the next day, they were droopy, just like the cheaper ranunculus. I have to say that I’m only talking from personal experience. But, in my case, I will not be purchasing these again when I’m asked to host a similar event. If you want to take your risk… please do… because it is pretty.
Veronica: Same fate as the cheap ranunculus and the pink snapdragon.
I need to state that I am in no way a flower expert. I am just someone who buys flowers on a weekly basis for her home, who has learned what lasts, what is easier to style, and what’s hard to maintain. I am a simple dilettante in the flower world, a person who loves beauty and loves to create it for everyone that allows me to.
Food: This column refers to the serving trays and bowls, including every utensil needed (plates, silverware, cups), water dispensers, etc. This menu was particularly easy because the party took place at 3:30 P.M. and was scheduled to end at 7:00 P.M. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. For the actual food, there was another tab titled, of course… “FOOD”.
Decor: Pieces and flowers, because one thing were the flowers for the bouquet activity; another different thing were the flowers used for decoration. The flowers for the bouquets needed to have different characteristics to the flowers used for decor.
Flowers used for decor needed to adhere to the color palette of the party and to complement one another. However, in this case, we went for a one-flower-look (the already mentioned ranunculus). The flowers for the bouquet station needed to be varied, colors didn’t have to match, variety and good quality were the main need.
The birthday girl wanted a citrus aesthetic. I went for a warm color palette of yellow, orange, and pink.
Activities: Every guest found on the table an envelope with her name. The birthday girl wrote a personal letter for each one of the attendees. After reading them, every girl was invited to write her own letter to the birthday girl. Therefore, we needed a stationery with envelopes and paper, pens, and a container where the birthday girl could keep her letters safe.
What I have found to be the most effective way to plan an event is to imagine it through the eyes of one guest. When it comes to the food, what will she need? Oh, she will need a napkin after eating the brownie and a toothpick if she wants to have her caprese salad in the form of a skewer. Yes, this is all obvious. But, if we do not have a system in place, it is incredibly easy to forget something as the toothpicks.
The second list is the TIMELINE. Here is where every activity is organized into time slots. Something I have found to be super useful are music playlists. Yes. There is a time slot for the arrival of the guests, where they greet the birthday girl (in this case, this event had a super chill vibe, so there was no grand entrance), maybe take some photos, and become acclimatize with the place. Well, this segment had its own 45-minute playlist. The bouquet making activity also had its own 30-minute playlist, and so on. We assigned a time slot to every activity; and although in an event as cozy and relaxed as this one it was never intended for everything to actually follow a strict schedule, it gives us a helpful structure to adhere to.
Birthday girl and friends with their respective bouquets.
The third tab is FOOD. The birthday girl wanted to serve a bunch of easy, room-temperature appetizers (yasss). I built a cheese board and served different skewers –caprese salad, olives and feta, gouda and blackberries–. The crackers with cream cheese and smoked salmon were a success, as were the brownies I baked in the morning. For the cake, I ordered a lemon and lime pound cake from Nena Miami, which is what in Spanish we call “a shot to the floor” (meaning that you cannot miss). This one was a particularly easy event due to the nature of the food itself and its number of guests.
Cheese board.
The last one is the BASICS tab. Here, I like to have in one place all of the main information about the party: date, time, duration, address, event type, color palette, number of guests, food type, and one word that describes the event… this helps me plan the whole thing by adhering to what my client ultimately wants to feel during the event and what they want their guests to feel.
And lists are what get me through every event and what ensures that nothing falls through the cracks. if I ever find a new method that works for me as wonderfully as to-do lists, I will share it as well.