Three people are searching for websites for event planners in Dublin tonight. A couple fourteen months from a wedding who have realised they both work full time. An office manager who has been handed the summer party for two hundred staff and a budget. A daughter organising her parents’ fiftieth anniversary in a hotel. None of them has hired a planner before, and all three are trying to answer the same questions: what exactly would you do for us, have you done something like this, how do you charge, and are you someone we would want in the room on the day.
We build the site, set up the email on your own domain, the enquiry form and the review request, and send you the numbers each month. You run the events.
Say exactly what you do
The word planner covers everything from a full year of work to turning up on the morning with a clipboard, and clients do not know which they are buying. So the first thing on the page is the menu, in plain words: full planning from the first conversation to the last taxi; partial planning where they have the venue and need the rest; on-the-day coordination where they have done it all and want to enjoy it. For corporate work, the same honesty: conferences, launches, staff parties, dinners, with what you manage and what the venue manages.
Say what you are not as well. You are not the venue, not the caterer, not a hire company. You choose and manage those for the client, and the suppliers you work with regularly, caterers, marquee companies, bands, photographers, are worth a sentence each, because the client is buying your address book as much as your diary.
Real events, credited
The portfolio is the proof, and for a planner it needs captions as much as photos. A picture of a beautiful room says little; a picture of a beautiful room with “a hundred and forty for dinner, a marquee on a family farm, three days of set-up, rain on the morning” says everything. Credit the photographer on every image. Corporate clients whose names cannot be used are described rather than named: the kind of event, the numbers, the venue type, what went wrong and how it was handled.
Do not invent testimonials. A short quote from a real client, used with permission, beats three paragraphs of praise nobody believes.
How you charge, said plainly
Planners are often shy about fees on the page, and it costs them hours in discovery calls with people who wanted a free supplier list. Say how you charge: a fixed fee for full planning, a day rate for coordination, a percentage of the budget for corporate work, hourly for consultancy. Give from-prices, and say the minimum budget you work with if you have one. Clients spending serious money on a day want a planner who is organised about money, and a clear fee page is the first proof.
Proposals and invoices go out from an address on your own domain, not a free one. It matters more to a company’s finance team than it costs, and there is a guide to business email on your own domain.
The enquiry that arrives qualified
The enquiry form on a planner’s site is a short intake interview. Kind of event, date or month, guest numbers, venue booked or not, budget band, what they want from you, how they heard of you. It arrives in your email and on WhatsApp with enough in it to decide whether to book a call. For the questions that come at midnight, “do you do on-the-day only”, “do you work outside Dublin”, “do you do hen parties”, the chat box answers from your own details and passes the rest to you in the morning.
The planner’s year
Wedding enquiries arrive in a wave in January and again in the autumn, and the couples are booking a year or more ahead. Corporate Christmas parties are being planned from September, and the companies that leave it to November are the ones ringing in a panic. Summer parties and family days are booked in the spring. The quiet months are for your own site: new photos from the season just gone, the fee page updated, a line about what you are booking next, all changed from your phone.
What we need from you
Photos from eight or ten events with the photographer’s name and permission to use them, your services and how you charge, a short description of each kind of event you take on, the suppliers you are happy to name, a photograph of you working an event, and a paragraph on how you handle the morning when the florist is late. Ten minutes on the phone or over a coffee and we have what we need.
Plan and price
Complete, at €1,499 to set up and €100 a month, is the right plan for most planners because the business email, the review request, the card payment for the fee and the chat box are each worth their share. Essentials, at €499 and €50 a month, suits a planner starting out who wants the portfolio and the form. Both are set out on the pricing page. Planners based outside Dublin start with a video call and the rest works the same.