Looking for ways to lower the cost of an upcoming event? Professional event planners typically have a fixed budget they must stay within. But it’s easy to go over this budget when booking a venue, hiring vendors, and performing the other tasks that go into planning an event. So, how can you cut these costs?
Book Multiple Events at Once
You can often save money by booking vendors’ services for multiple events at once. For instance, if you’re planning three or four events over the course of the next few months, ask vendors how much they’ll charge to service all of these events. Many florists, photographers, caterers and other vendors offer discounts on bulk orders such as this.
Buffet-Style Food
Rather than spending a fortune of high-end catering, consider buffet-style food for your event. Aside from the venue, catering is one of the greatest expenses when planning an event. While you shouldn’t eliminate food and beverages altogether, you can cut costs by creating a buffet. Whether it’s sandwich bites, fruit and veggie trays, cheese and cracks, etc., buffets are a cost-effective alternative to full-scale catering.
Reuse Fixtures
Try reusing lighting, audio/video equipment and other fixtures instead of buying new ones for your event. Buying new fixtures for each even can become quite pricey, but it’s also a cost that’s easily minimized by reusing existing fixtures from past events.
Sponsorships
Does another company or organization want to sponsor your event? This is a great way to cut costs, as sponsors typically pay to advertise their brand at the event. You’ll benefit from the revenue, and the sponsoring company or organization benefits from the additional brand exposure.
Promote on Social Media
With nearly three-fourths of the U.S. population having at least one social media account or profile, this is the perfect platform on which event planners can promote their upcoming events. Unlike many traditional forms of advertising, social media costs little to nothing. You can promote your event on Facebook, for example, by creating a Page and inviting users to that Page. You can also promote your event on Twitter simply by tweeting about the event and its highlighted activities.
E-Vites
With the exception of weddings, digital invitations (known as e-vites) are the perfect alternative to traditional paper invitations. Aside from the software, they cost virtually nothing to produce or send. And when sending e-vites, you can rest assured knowing guests will receive them immediately, whereas paper invitations may take days (or longer) to reach guests.