Event and wedding planners are often asked about the essential elements that make an event special. The more obvious answers of good food, music, and decor are all true, but something that people hosting events usually don't think of is flow -- how people will move through the event space. 

All of our planners spend a lot of time considering options when designing the layout for a wedding, gala, fundraiser, or bash. The purpose of the event helps to guide the process and, of course, the venue configuration has a significant role as well. 

From there the specific needs of the event - be it a dance floor, stage or platform for a speaker or performer, the bar, seating and tables, and any transitions (i.e. fabric draping) - inform the plans for the space. 

In a recent post on BizBash, Josh Tierney, director of style and design for planning company Great Performances, said: “The best parties have a mix of seating that takes the personalities of guests into account—lounge seating by the dance floor for the party animals, lots of high-tops and tall communal tables by the bar to create a bar scene, a dark lounge tucked away so that wallflowers feel cool and have a space to observe, traditional guest seating for older folks, and a reserved place for senior management to hold court. Building the floor plan should take real people into account.”

A past article from InTents Magazine outlined some best practices for designing good event flow. In addition to aesthetics, there are safety concerns as well: you don't want guests tripping over power cords or sitting at tables that are in the way of the bathrooms or kitchen door. 

In the article, Kelly Murphy of Pompano Beach, FL-based Panache said:  “Walking the space with the client is also very helpful,” she says. “People do not always see things that can be obvious obstacles, like trees, ground covering in terms of selecting the proper tent option for staking or construction, and guest accessibility. It is the foundation from which to build, so the initial phase of understanding the layout and being able to visualize it is vitally important.”

If you're planning your own event, try to visualize how people will enter and move around the space. Think about the pieces of the event and how it will progress. Of course, if you're hiring an event planner, he or she will be able to take all factors into consideration when laying out your event and will have contingency plans or be able to think quickly on their feet if something isn't quite right. 

Guys often get a bad rap for not being interested or involved in wedding planning. Sure, there are some grooms-to-be who are happy to take a back seat as long as their fiancée is happy, but then there are the grooms who are much more hands-on and want to share their opinions on everything from invitation style to decor elements. For these grooms, and those who aren't as gung-ho but want to learn more: The Plunge.

Written with a sense of humor, the site gives grooms (and groomsmen) an overview of the responsibilities and expectations for their roles, advice for thorny etiquette problems, tools like checklists and a budget planner, and articles covering the entire process from proposal to honeymoon and beyond.

With the information on this site, grooms can impress their brides, or at least be up on the wedding website lingo and on the same page as their partners. It's your wedding, too, guys. You deserve to be a part of it!

Here are a few articles from their site to get you started:

• Planning Checklist
  
• Drafting Your Team: Selecting Your Best Man and Groomsmen
• The Disgusting Budget Basics
• Honeymoon Destinations on a Budget
• Legal Junk and Paperwork: Health Care Proxies, Wills, and More

We often help organizations of all kinds produce fundraising events.  When you're producing an event that benefits a cause or a charity, getting attendees and potential donors to feel as passionately about the issue as you do is key. Creating an emotional connection means that you could potentially raise more money for the organization, and you may earn new supporters who continue efforts to raise awareness and funds beyond the event itself.

Having something tangible makes the challenges others face seem more real. In Brooklyn, past-its-prime food and a scrubbed-down garbage dumpster have become the foundation for Salvage Supperclubs. Conceptualized by designer Josh Treuhaft for his recent master's thesis, the idea is to create a six-course meal from food that is imperfect or about to be thrown away. Guests pay $50 (suggested donation) to attend the dinner and the goal is to raise awareness about how much food is actually wasted unnecessarily. The proceeds from the dinners go to various charities dealing with hunger relief, healthy food access, and other food-related concerns. 

A Huffington Post article on the supper clubs stated this: "According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, American families throw out about 25 percent of their groceries each year, often because they don't maximize the food's full use -- for example, some people throw away broccoli stems and only use the florets -- or they don't know how to store perishable items correctly. What's more, according to the World Resources Institute, about one-third of all food produced worldwide gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems annually."

Having guests sit in a dumpster eating food that was nearly wasted creates a much bigger impact than having them listen to speeches, however impassioned. 

Another great example of this strategy is from charity: water. Most of us have likely seen pictures of African villagers carrying large jugs of water back to their homes. You see the image and you understand that getting clean water is hardship in many places, but you don't necessarily connect with the reality of it. Charity: water held an event where guests were encouraged to carry a standard 40-pound jerry can of water about 50 yards. The guests couldn't believe how heavy the cans were and how hard it is to move the cans even a short distance. Guests were able to more fully realize the difficulty many people face in accessing a basic human right and felt more passionately that something must be done. 

For another clever example, see this article from Event Solutions. Creative ideas like these create a physical and emotional experience that garner a much larger investment from guests and benefit the cause in a more meaningful way.


Photos: The Huffington Post, Event Solutions