Corporate events
The office party booking checklist
5 min read
Office party booking is one of those tasks that looks like an afternoon of work and turns into six weeks of chasing. This checklist keeps it to the afternoon.
Before you look at a single venue
- Get the headcount and the budget signed off in the same email
- Confirm whether alcohol is in scope — it changes the venue list entirely
- Fix the date against the company calendar, not just the venue calendar
- Decide who has veto power, and get them into the shortlist conversation early
Shortlisting corporate event spaces
Three venues, no more. Visit all three if you can, at the time of day the event will run. A space that photographs well at 2pm can be unusable at 9pm, and the reverse is just as common.
The five things planners forget
- Accessibility — step-free access and an accessible bathroom, confirmed in writing
- Dietary requirements collected before the catering deadline, not after
- A named venue contact who will be on site during the event
- Last-mile transport, especially for suburban team building party venues
- A wet-weather plan for anything outdoors
On the day
Arrive ninety minutes early, walk the room against your run sheet, and test the sound before anyone else is in the building. Every problem you find in that window is a problem nobody else ever notices.