Let’s be honest, when you walk into an event the first thing you notice isn’t the people or even the food (although food might be a close second). It’s the décor, the vibe and the experience they create. As the saying goes first impressions are a lasting impression so strategically coming up with a cohesive esthetic is important. Starting with an idea of how formal or casual your event will be is a good start. This will help you decide what direction to go in when choosing the theme or overall look. Weather you’ve chosen a more casual event like a brunch and choose to go with a “girls just wanna have fun” theme or your event is more formal such as a wedding and perhaps a “starry night” theme is fitting, you want to ensure you have a clear vision and basis of what exactly the theme you select looks like. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that theme? What are the colors? What elements do you envision? Start a Pinterest board of your initial ideas and see where those pins take you. Other people might have created the same, if not similar theme before so check out what they have done and go from there. Make it your own. Creating a Pinterest board will help you to stay on track and keep you from veering off into a different direction that doesn’t necessarily go with your look. Yes some ideas are super cute and look great, just not for the your particular theme. Pinterest will help you stay on track. When making your Pinterest board its also important to find ideas that add a unique and special touch. Things that your guests wouldn’t have thought of and most likely haven’t seen before. It doesn’t have to be anything super complicated or even expensive. On our Instagram event planning account @esquarednyc we post something we call “DIY Fri”, every Friday. Its some of our favorite DIYs that add character to events. We love DIYs because they are made by you, providing your event with personal touches. Not to mention they can save you some serious cash. We highly encourage our clients to make certain items versus buying all of the décor when we budget their event. Something as simple as adding fruit, edible glitter or flowers to ice cubes for your signature cocktail is a special touch that’s different and memorable. Pinterest is filled with ides like these that help elevate your event. Once you have an idea of what type of theme you want, it is important to make yourself an event planning checklist of items you need (functional and decorative). This ensures that you don’t forget the important items (like silverware and plates) but also don’t over buy anything (such as too many flower boxes for centerpieces). We personally like incorporating the checklist within the budget for clients so that we can add all of the prices ensuring everything is accounted for while also staying aligned with the budget. If you're planning an event as large as a wedding, odds are that you are purchasing things over a long span of time and its easy to purchase many different items that you may not remember you bought. This is why we like to lay out all décor items on a visual presentation for clients to review and ensure we are sticking to the overall theme clients selected. We typically use photoshop to do this, however PowerPoint is another program that works for laying out images. Since Covid has hit most people are doing their shopping online so its easy to use the snipping tool on your computer to copy the image of the item you purchased or are considering purchasing. Then you can easily paste it onto the board you are creating. This will ensure it goes with your theme or let you know if it doesn't before you make the purchase. If items are purchased in store you can just take a quick pic on your smart phone and send the image to your email where you can save it onto your computer and place onto your board. We also like to add the event colors as “swatches”, again to ensure we are visually on track. Its not only a good idea to do this with décor items but also for the fashion (or clothing). If your event involves color coordinating fashion such as a wedding, it can be hard to coordinate an entire wedding party (men and woman) without seeing it together visually and having the ability to reference back to it. We did this for a barn wedding as the bridesmaids were all wearing pastel blue, however different shades and different style dresses. To ensure it was all cohesive we created a presentation of all the dresses lined up together with the groomsman’s suits. This removed the stress of only seeing it all together on the day of the wedding while also allowing us to make edits where necessary. All of the above mentioned are large parts of the event planning process we take for décor and theme creation. Being organized, paying great attention to detail and having a creative flare are all traits that will help you throw a flawless event. These traits also apply directly to the decorating portion of the event planning process. Weather you don’t feel confident in one or more of these areas, don’t have the time, don’t want to worry about organizing the event day of, or simply don’t want the stress that can come with planning an entire event, hiring a professional event planner might be the way to go. E Squared is a unique event planning service in that we handle any of your event planning needs virtually (with in person options if desired). With COVID 19 still lurking E Squared has created a way to provide our clients with everything they need in the comfort of their own home. Simply book a free online consultation, explain your event goals with your budget and leave the rest to us. Along the way we provide an open line of communication and request approval for everything we do. On the day of the event you can choose to have us come out and ensure everything is running smoothly or we can provide you with a detailed guide to DIY (do it yourself). If you are on for tackling the event yourself follow the steps mentioned and we are sure they will help you stay on track, organized and have a successful event. Happy planning!