Busting Event Planning Myths: Why Your Planner Can’t Ballpark your Costs Upfront

Sep 15

We frequently receive inquiries from interested potential clients seeking a cost range for their events. Could you ballpark that for me? While we understand the desire to have a figure you can rely on from the get-go, by their nature custom events run into a range of specifics that prevent off-the-shelf pricing—from complex to simple events, from the overarching goal to the tiniest of details to bring it all together. Every event contains a plethora of unique elements that make it impossible to create a budget in a vacuum.

At Kennedy Events, we strive to deliver event plans tailored specifically to your team and goals, which is why it’s challenging to give you a ballpark budget at the start. Without knowing your event’s size, scale, length, or location (to name just a few of the contributing factors), it’s impossible to give you a budget range that you can rely on. In fact, it could actually work against you if you start planning with an inaccurate target or bring a lowball event budget to your boss.

Why We Can’t Give You a Ballpark Figure

Variables based on your goals and objectives:

Food and drink: Peanuts, cracker jacks, and beer OR oysters, champagne, and caviar?
Venue location: Desired for its convenience, caché, and/or size and functionality?
Overall event feel: Basic and functional or sophisticated and refined?
Registration and attendee check-in experience: Nuts and bolts only or on-demand badges, sleek agendas, audience metrics, attendee journey, sponsor badge scanning…?
Stage and session content: “I just need to be able to show a PowerPoint and talk through it” or TED Talk or television-quality production with post-event recordings, Livestream, sophisticated digital content?
Branding and design: Functional branded signage and slides OR sharply and selectively applied “WOW” brand elements OR a fully immersive brand experience?

Variables based on venue and labor:

Union rules at the venue
Labor and staffing rules and best practices from catering, trucking, audio visual company, load-in, and load-out
Civic/permit requirements such as fire marshal approval or event insurance
Allowed load-in timing
Customized branding, installation, rigging, etc.
Service staff needed to produce your desired guest experience

As planners, we need all the details. We understand that a comprehensive and well-managed event budget can be challenging and time-consuming to set up. In the long run, it will be helpful to have this roadmap for planning a successful event in the long run. It will also save you time, resources, and all those hassles and headaches you’d otherwise get from organizing an event without a clear budget. It may be that you have in-house resources, that your session and speaker needs are super straightforward, or that your hybrid needs are more of a live stream with a cost-effective platform—the possibilities are endless. This is why we always start with a conversation and request all new inquiries fill out our questionnaire, which shakes out as many details as you can provide.

How Do You Determine the Budget for an Event?

Imagine an architect preparing to design a new home. Without fully seeing the piece of land, knowing how many bathrooms you'll want, if you like top-of-the-line appliances…or any of the hundreds of other details that go into designing a home, they would be unable to ballpark a home design and the cost of building until the project is fully scoped.

When it comes to custom events, just like that new home scenario, there are far too many variables to provide a cost estimate upfront. Different factors go into the budget for every event. Some of these factors might include your event goal, the event scope, the size of the event, and the location.

Most events will include the following items as high-priority, but keep in mind these must-have items can vary depending on the type of event and other factors specific to your event.

Venue rental (including hotel sleeping rooms and additional costs like required insurance, etc.)
A/V equipment (speakers, mics, etc.)
Staffing (including accommodations for staff or volunteers)
Catering
Signage, branding, marketing collateral
Stage decor
Event marketing and promotions
Event technology (registration software, event management solution, virtual event platform, etc. )
Equipment and furniture rental

Once your planner is clear on your event goals, the scope of the support you need, and the elements you want to include, you can feel secure knowing the budget they provide is reliable.

How Much Should I Plan for the Event Management Fee?

The cost of partnering with an event management company comes down to the scope of the project and experience. Experienced planners bring tremendous value to a team. The invisible workload of meetings and events is real. It’s hard to understand the full breadth of the job without going through the experience of fully planning an event.

At Kennedy Events, our full-service event and project management costs typically range from 20-30% of your total event budget. We have additional services for technical direction and A/V support that we can offer as well as access to our expansive network of venues and vendors.

If that gives you sticker shock, we don’t blame you! However, we pride ourselves on wrestling budgets into submission and identifying opportunities for cost savings. (Ask us about the time we saved a client $60,000 through a quick review of an A/V order they negotiated before hiring KE.)

How To Get Started

Once you’ve filled out the event scoping questionnaire and we’ve had a chance to connect with you to define better your event needs we will be able to provide a more accurate estimate of the cost.

Events demand attention to a million tiny details. Establishing a budget can feel impossible when you’re unaware of market rates or you’re at a loss for where to begin. Our expert planners work with you to relieve the overwhelm by building out high-caliber experiences and attending to every last detail to deliver on your event goals. If you want to outsource your event planning expertise, schedule some time with us today!

MAGGIE KENNEDY

Maggie Kennedy is the co-owner of Kennedy Events is a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.