Whether you’re throwing a hens, bucks, birthday or corporate party – the fundamentals of piecing it together are relatively the same and the process can be quite stressful for the organiser.

For some people, being in charge of planning a big event is a challenging but exciting opportunity to put on something amazing – for others however, it can be an incredibly daunting situation, especially if its a large group where you don’t know everyone in attendance.

But whether you’re excited to be in charge or not  – the fact is that a lot of people simply don’t have the time it takes to research, contact and plan out every aspect of the party- even more so if your wanting to plan a party that has more than one main event.

So with everyone’s busy schedules these days its no surprise that more and more people are choosing to book through an events planning company such as GoBananas.
For some, using an event planner is the very best thing – whether they have time or not, whereas others can find it a little harder to let go of the reigns and trust their party rep.
This goes both ways however with your party rep being able to trust you (the client) to let us organise your party.

So, here are GoBananas top tips on how to be a great client and make the planning process easier for everyone involved:

• Communicate your expectations clearly – from the very beginning its important that your party rep has a clear idea of activities you want to book, even if you haven’t 100% made up your mind we need to know the direction you want your party to go in.
• Allow reasonable time for work to be done – of course planning an event is a time sensitive issue as the party date is the dead line, but its important for the client to understand that your booking is not the only party in motion for the whole company, while it is a priority for us – its not the only one.
• Be available for questions – in some instances your party rep wont be able to continue on a certain aspect of your party until they’ve got the go ahead from you – making sure that you are available to talk or respond to your reps queries in a timely fashion is imperative for making sure your events progress doesn’t fall behind.  Or if you know you’ll be unreachable for a few days – please let your rep know so they wont think you’ve vanished off the face of the earth.
• Pay on time – this one is a biggy. A lot of the time our clients are waiting on their group members to pay before they can forward this onto us, so we always recommend that you give your group a cut off day to finish paying you at least week prior to the final payment being due overall. Nobody wants to be getting annoyed phone calls about overdue bills and we certainly don’t like giving them.
• Don’t micromanage your party rep – you’ve come to booking agency for a reason so it doesn’t make sense to then try to control every single aspect of the booking at every point along the way. You’ve hired a company to do a job – so trust in their expertise and sit back and relax.
• Be the single point of contact – a surefire way to get wires crossed and cause mistakes in a booking is to bring on another person half way through to deal with your party rep. Chances are they wont know the booking as well as you and things can get messy when they suddenly want to change something that has already been decided. Keep it nice and easy and follow through from the start.
• Give credit where due – a lot of business these days relies on word mouth, so if you think the company did a great job with you booking and you were happy with how everything turned out, then pass on the details to friend or family who may be looking for something similar. A good word goes a long way.

Keep these tips in mind when booking your next party and you’ll be best buds with your party planner in no time – making the whole experience much easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Happy Planning!