How to Become an Event Planner
Be the person behind the scenes of a great event.
Think back to the last time you attended a business conference, trade show, or business holiday party. How about a wedding reception, baby shower, or birthday party? You walked in and received a welcome packet or gift. There was a table with coffee, water, and some snacks. Perhaps the tables were appointed with pencils and notepads or centerpieces and programs. If you were impressed by how everything looked and how smoothly it ran, you might be interested in learning how to become an event planner.
While it all looks seamless to guests, an event for a dozen or more people can take hours of planning. You see the decorations, materials, and food, but behind the scenes, there can be lists of details like labor, shipping, and timekeeping that are essential for a smooth event. The ideal event planner is someone with eight arms and an enormous clipboard to hold hundreds of notes and itineraries.
Seriously though, how does someone keep track of all the things they need to do for a large event? What is event planning really like? How do you know where to find miscellaneous items like pens, flowers, and tablecloths that exactly match a company’s logo? Those are just a few questions you may have about the world of an event planner.
Let’s look into how to put together your plan to learn how to become an event planner.
What Is Event Planning?
An event planner is the person who manages every detail of an event. While they don’t arrange the chairs at a business meeting or cook the food for a trade show party, they are in charge of finding and managing the people who do. Large businesses, convention and visitors bureaus, charities, and trade associations that do a lot of fundraising events may have one or more event planners on staff. They can choose instead to hire companies that specialize in events. Some hotels, restaurants, and trade show locations have event planners on staff to help organize an event. Here are the types of events that can require an event planner:
- Large business meetings, especially if attendees are from out of town.
- Conferences and conventions for an industry or organization.
- Trade shows where vendors display their products to prospective clients.
- Company holiday parties, organization anniversaries, and award dinners.
- Public marketing events like grand openings, groundbreakings, and contests.
- Private events like weddings and birthday celebrations.
What Does an Event Planner Do?
An easier question might be, “What doesn’t an event planner do?”
Whether you’re planning a corporate event like a conference, or a private event like a wedding, event planners tend to work long and sometimes non-traditional hours in their office, on the road, and at event locations.
Let’s take a typical sales meeting with 100 of a company’s salespeople from all over the country, coming together in Orlando, Florida, for three days. Whether you work for the company hosting the meeting, an outside event planning firm, or the hotel where all the salespeople are staying, here are some important things that are your responsibility:
- Meeting with company executives or managers to learn the reason and objectives for the event.
- Designing and sending invitations and collecting RSVPs.
- Scouting and reserving all the venues for the event, like the meeting rooms, restaurants, and hotel rooms.
- Finding vendors, including entertainers, caterers, and photographers, then negotiating contracts, and making sure everyone gets paid after the event.
- Shipping materials like a trade show display or company brochures.
- Planning the agenda and devising a way to stay on schedule.
- Choosing food and beverages.
- Facilitating reservations for flights and hotel rooms.
- Ordering supplies like notebooks and pens, wedding favors, and table settings.
- Finding appropriate gifts to give attendees.
- Coordinating technology and equipment like microphones, stages, tables, and chairs.
- Being on hand for the entire event to keep things running smoothly and on time.
What Skills Do Event Planners Need?
The type of person who is best at planning events and can be on the road to knowing how to become an event planner is someone who can multi-task, is flexible, and can pivot on a dime if things start going sideways. Experience and technical skills that are essential for an event planner include:
- Negotiating
- Communication
- Interpersonal Skills
- Organization
- Attention to Detail
Where Do Event Planners Work?
You have choices about what kind of event planning job you’d most enjoy. You can work as an event planner three ways.
1. Corporate Event Planner
A corporate event planner works for a company, non-profit organization, or political party as an in-house employee with a paid position. They handle every detail for an event from devising the initial plan for the event to managing it on event day.
2. Venue Event Planner
You’ll find event planners in venues where you hold events. Hotels have event planners who help you choose rooms for your event and then they work closely with their food and beverage or catering departments. They have many contacts to call on to supply centerpieces, flowers, music, photography, and nearly any other detail you want. Many larger hotels have an additional event planner who specializes in wedding receptions.
Convention centers that are used for conferences and trade shows have one or more event planners. In this job, the event planner’s duties include devising the layout for the event, ordering tables, chairs, electric cords, and anything else participants might need. They work with the organization that is sponsoring an event and the participants that can range from a couple dozen to more than 1,000 companies.
3. Independent Event Planner
You can open your own event planning business to coordinate corporate events. There are also many independent event planners who work exclusively on weddings. As an independent, you’ll work with a client on every aspect of their event, negotiating contracts and hiring all the vendors the event needs.
How to Become an Event Planner
There are a few ways to become an event planner. No matter which path you take to get there, your event planner career will always keep changing and evolving as technology and styles change. You can learn something new from each event you plan.
Event Planner Education Requirements
In general, an event planner should have a bachelor’s degree. A few colleges offer event planning programs or classes on how to become an event planner, but majoring in hospitality management, business, communications, or social science are also good choices.
How to Become an Event Planner With No Experience
While it’s good to have a solid educational background in hospitality, most event planners fall into the profession because they’re organized and love a good party. You can easily transition into corporate event planning from a job in hotel management, catering, restaurant management, corporate communications, or non-profit fundraising.
If your goal is to become an independent event planner, your next step is to contact as many vendors as you can to announce your business and talk to them so you’re familiar with their offerings and prices. Vendors will also send leads your way if you build good relationships with them. Reach out to your area’s caterers, florists, photographers, musicians, hotels, and any other details a client might want.
But before you launch your business, it’s a good idea to take a few basic classes about facilities and site location, budgeting, and strategic planning offered by event planning trade associations. These include online programs.
Other ways to start your business include building a website or exhibiting at local business events and wedding shows.
Event Planning Certification
You do not need any type of certification to be an event planner. Several trade groups offer voluntary event planning certifications that you can use primarily for marketing to potential clients or adding to your resume.
Here are a few of the most popular event planning certifications.
CMP Certification
The most prestigious event planner certification is the Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) credential offered by the Events Industry Council. To earn the CMP certification, you must submit an application with proof that you have experience and education in meeting planning. To qualify, you must pass an exam with questions about strategic planning, financial and risk management, facility operations and services, and logistics.
CGMP Certification
The Society of Government Meeting Professionals offers the Certified Government Meeting Professional (CGMP) designation for event planners who work on federal, state, or local government events. This certification assures you understand how to become an event planner that knows government purchasing policies and travel regulations.
You must have at least one year’s experience working as a meeting planner and belong to SGMP for at least six months. If accepted, you must take a three-day course and pass an exam.
CEM Certification
If you work on trade shows and conventions, you can take a series of nine classes from the International Association of Exhibitions and Events to receive a Certification in Exhibition Management (CEM) designation.
Wedding Planner Certification
Wedding planners can boost their marketing power by joining the American Association of Certified Wedding Planners. You can take their classes in person or online to be certified that you’ve learned how to become an event planner for weddings.
How Much Do Event Planners Make?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has good news for current and prospective event planners. It expects employment for the people behind great events to grow at a much larger-than-average rate of 18% over the next 10 years.
The median corporate event planner salary is $43,888 or $21.10 per hour. To find out the average corporate event planner salary in your area, look up your location in the Monster Salary Guide.
Independent event planners usually charge a percentage of the cost of the event for their services rather than an hourly rate.
How to Find Event Planner Jobs
Your first step in becoming a corporate event planner is to put together a resume showing off your skills and experience. You’ll want to include the types of events you’ve planned, who you’ve planned events for, and the skills that make you an outstanding event planner along with your professional website and portfolio. Look at this sample event planner resume for ideas.
Then, plan out what you’re going to put in your event planner cover letter. You’ll notice this template for an event planner cover letter mentions achievements using numbers and points to parts of the accompanying resume for the types of events the applicant has planned.
Once you have your resume and cover letter written, you can send your application package for event planner jobs on Monster.
Looking for jobs in a specific place? Or are you open to moving? The BLS identifies five states and five areas that have the most event planning jobs. The states are:
The areas with the highest demand for event planners are:
Remember the Most Important Detail to Finding an Event Planner Job
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