Our team of experienced Event Planners selected the Top 10 Event Planning Books
1. Event Planning and Management: Principles, Planning, and Practice (PR In Practice)
Event Planning and Management is an ideal resource for those seeking a step-by-step formula to plan and deliver a successful event. With the vital balance of professional experience behind them, the authors teach the next generation of event planners with unrivaled knowledge, ensuring an effective event process from start to finish. This book delivers a practical understanding of the theory and practice needed to activate each planning stage, from initial venue selection, budgeting, and program content to managing stakeholders and sponsors, promotion, risk assessment, safety, and post-event evaluation.
2. Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide To Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events
This bestselling all-in-one guide to the event planning business is back and better than ever, fully updated and revised to reflect the latest trends and best practices in the industry. This comprehensive guide includes forms, checklists, and tips for managing events, as well as examples and case studies of successful and unsuccessful events.
3. Special Events: Creating and Sustaining a New World for Celebration
Providing a comprehensive guide to understanding, planning, promoting, and producing special events, this seventh edition of Special Events, 7th Edition describes the theory and practice of all aspects of event management. Written for current and future event leaders, the text continues to expand its emphasis on the growing globalization of the profession, taking into account the skills leaders need to deal with other cultures, societies, and business practices to plan and deliver successful events. New coverage includes sustainability, technology, security/risk management, and the impact of social media on events and event marketing. 15 all-new case studies have been included, as well as a brief glossary of terms at the end of each chapter to define further the terms used in the chapter.
4. How to Price Your Event Planning Services
Whether starting an event planning business for weddings, corporate events, or social celebrations, you should know how to charge for services.
Several factors go into determining your rate, including event planning and operating expenses, salaries, and profits. Rates will vary based on your location, your skills, the type of events, and what the market is willing to pay.
This workbook will walk you through calculating the best price for your event planning services using the three most common pricing structures for event and wedding planners.
5. Event Management For Dummies
Whether you want to break into this burgeoning industry or plan an event and don’t know where to start, there’s something for all would-be event planners in EventManagement For Dummies. Packed with tips, hints, and checklists, it covers all aspects of planning and running an event – from budgeting, scheduling, and promotion to finding the location, sorting security, health and safety, and much more.
- Planning, budgeting, and strategy
- Guests and target audience
- Promoting and marketing events
- Location, venue, and travel logistics
- Food, drink, entertainment, and themes
- Security, health and safety, permissions, insurance, and the like
6. Start your Own Event Planning Business
Weddings, graduations, birthday parties, anniversaries, and conferences—what do these all have in common? Everyone would instead hire someone else to plan and run them! That someone can be you.
Take your passion for event planning to the next level with in-the-trenches advice and the tools you need to start, run, and grow a successful business. From writing a solid contract to finding reliable vendors, our experts help you identify your niche, teach you how to scout potential clients, evaluate the competition, market your business, and more.
7. Confessions of an Event Planner
For anyone planning events—student, novice, or experienced professional—Confessions of an Event Planner is an“apprenticeship in a book.” This insider’s guide takes you on a narrative journey, following a fictional event-planning company that stages various types of events around the world for many different clients.
While other books, college courses, and training programs give you the theory and how-to of the profession, Confessions of an event, Planner reveals the real world of event planning and what can happen—usually the unexpected—on an event program when actual participants are added to the event planning design and execution mix. In a climate of media scrutiny and corporate scandals, event planners must be masters of discretion, knowing how to avoid and deal with everything from sexual romps to financial shenanigans to chainsaw-wielding salesmen dead set on“re-landscaping” the grounds of the resort they’re staying at. From an event planner who’s seen it all and knows how to deal with it all comes practical first-hand advice delivered in an entertaining and accessible format.
8. The Complete Guide to Successful Event Planning
The Complete Guide to Successful Event Planning is designed to assist any planner with meeting all the challenges surrounding a production. Whether you are in charge of one important event or have chosen event planning as a career, you want your events to be incredibly successful and remembered for years to come. A memorable event flows smoothly, with every detail carefully orchestrated and meticulously produced with the participant in mind.
Successful events do not just fall together; they result from hard work, creativity, awareness, and careful attention to detail – every detail.
9. Event Design Handbook: Systematically Design Innovative Events Using the #EventCanvas
This handbook will change the way you think about how events change the world you live in. It shows how to re-design your world on one sheet of paper using the #EventCanvas. This book identifies the starting point of any event and outlines how events come to life. It focuses on the DNA of specific aspects of events and provides insight into how to observe and analyze events, understand stakeholders, and define behavioral changes required to deliver value. It also identifies the levers and mechanisms influencing such behavioral changes in event design.
This handbook lays the foundation for creating a common language. A language that can be spoken and understood by those who know and don’t yet know the mechanics of events. It is a pragmatic approach to designing and creating events that matter.
10. The Business of Event Planning: Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of Successful Special Events
Before planning an event, much must be done behind the scenes to make the event successful. Before any thought is even given to the timing or location of the event, before the menus are selected and the decor designed, there are proposals to be written, fees and contracts to be negotiated, and safety issues to be considered. This book takes you behind the scenes of event planning and explains every aspect of organizing and strategic planning. This book will be of value to both professional event planners and clients dealing with planners.
Its comprehensive coverage includes how to prepare winning proposals and how to understand them if you are the client; how to determine management fees; negotiate contracts; safety issues; designing events in multicultural settings; and new technology that makes operations more efficient (such as online registration and response management, database project management tools). The book also includes practical tools such as sample letters of agreement, sample layouts for client proposals, forms, and checklists. Professional event planner Judy Allen offers first-time or experienced event planners all the top-class advice they need to make their special events come off without a hitch.