After 5 EventsWhat the evening asks of you
Guests arrive knowing this is formal. They expect a clear programme: when to sit, when the speeches start, when the film plays. If the timeline is vague or the microphone cuts halfway through the founder's story, it is not a technical failure — it is the company looking unprepared in front of the people whose opinion of it matters most.
You are hosting and you are being hosted to. That is the structural problem. You cannot stand at the door welcoming arrivals and simultaneously be backstage cueing the presentation. You cannot fix the projector and also be in the photograph.
What doing it yourself genuinely involves
Organising this event in-house means one person owns the following: venue contract and deposit, caterer negotiation and tasting, equipment hire for sound, lights and projection, a run sheet with timings for every speech, film and toast, coordination on the day across venue staff, caterer, AV contractor and your own team, and troubleshooting when the client who is speaking arrives late or the HDMI cable is the wrong standard.
Most of that is administrative until the day itself. On the day it is physical: you are moving chairs, testing microphones, running slides from a laptop you have backed up twice, and steering a seventy-year-old former board member away from the projector. If you have done it before and you have a colleague who can own the technical half while you own the guest half, it is possible. If this is your first or your company is above fifty people, it is not.
Two kinds of agency
The first kind takes your brief, adds fifteen percent, and forwards it to contractors they found that week. They coordinate by email. On the evening, the lighting crew has not met the AV crew, and nobody has met you. When something needs a decision, they call the agency, who calls you.
The second kind quotes with their own crew and stays with their own crew. The person who visits the venue is the person programming the lights. The sound engineer is the one answering your questions three weeks out. On the evening, they know the room because they rigged it, and they know each other because they have worked two hundred events together.
You will meet both. The difference is not obvious in the proposal; it is explicit in one question: who will actually be on site?
What an agency takes off you, and what it does not
Hiring production means the equipment arrives, works, and is operated by someone who is not you. It means the microphone is live when the CEO steps up, the film plays without switching inputs three times, and the lighting shifts when the speeches end and the reception begins. It means one phone number for all of it.
It does not mean you stop making decisions. You still settle the programme order, the speech length, the branding on the screen behind the speaker. An agency executes the evening; it does not write it. If you want someone to write it, that is a different role — a producer or a creative lead, usually billed separately, sometimes the same team.
When to keep it in-house
If your anniversary event is a lunch for thirty people in your own office, a short speech and a toast, you do not need an outside crew. Rent a microphone, borrow a projector if you are showing something, and run it yourself.
Keep the guest list, the invitations and the programme in-house regardless. An agency can tell you a realistic runtime for four speakers and a film; it cannot tell you which former employees to invite or whether the minister should speak before or after the founder.
What to settle before calling anyone
Know the venue, the date and the rough guest count. If you are comparing quotes and one is by the hour and one is by the event, you cannot compare them without knowing how long the evening runs. If you are showing film or slides, know the format and resolution; AV cost follows from that.
Decide whether you want the agency to manage the caterer and the venue, or just to deliver sound, light and staging into a room you have already booked. The first is simpler and costs more. The second keeps you in the centre of every conversation.
The decision you are making is not whether the evening will be good — you will make it good either way, by committing hours or committing budget. The decision is whether you want to spend the evening as the host or as the person checking cables. We are the crew that builds the room and runs the technical evening; After 5 Events is the name on the invoice when that is what you need off your desk.