After 5 EventsDecide the format before you book the venue
No inherited tradition means no inherited shape. You are choosing between a standing reception with a short programme, a seated dinner with speakers, a terrace party that moves between spaces, or a product reveal that needs a stage and controlled lighting. Each one makes different demands on the room, and the venue either holds the format or it does not.
Book the space for what it is, not for what the renders show. A glass-walled conference room throws sound straight back at you. A terrace with a low ceiling cannot take truss. A gallery with concrete floors makes every footstep audible during a speech. The venue limits the format, so the venue comes second.
Plan for the camera, not just the guest
This event will be photographed, filmed, possibly streamed, and those images do work after the evening ends. That changes the technical brief.
A room that looks good to a guest does not always look good to a lens. Overhead fluorescents flatten faces. Uplighting on white walls blows out a photograph. A stage that works for the people in the room may have a projector screen glowing behind the speaker in every frame, and a livestream needs a hardwired network drop and a dedicated audio feed, neither of which most venues route to the corner a camera operator would choose.
If the evening is being documented, the lighting and sound rig is planned with the camera in mind. The photographer needs to know where the brightest practical light will be and whether they can move during speeches. The livestream operator needs to know what they are cutting to — a wide of the room, a tight on the speaker, slides fed directly from the deck — and whether the venue allows a second screen as a confidence monitor.
Name the programme before you spec the room
The evening has a shape: welcome, programme, music, close. The programme is the part that makes demands.
A five-minute thank-you from the CEO needs a microphone and a place to stand. A product reveal with three speakers and a video package needs a stage, a projector with enough lumens to compete with the room lights, and a way to dim those lights on cue without killing the bar. A panel conversation needs lapel mics, not handhelds, and a moderator who knows that the audience cannot hear a nodding head.
Programme first, then the technical rider. The rider describes what the programme needs to happen, and the venue either has the infrastructure or it does not. If the ceiling cannot take a truss and the floor cannot take a freestanding rig, the format has to bend or the venue has to change.
Understand what you are paying for when you hire an agency
Two kinds of event agency exist, and the difference is in who does the work.
One kind plans the event and forwards the brief to subcontractors it has never worked alongside. It earns on every line — sound, lights, catering, staff — because it is a broker, not a crew. The people who quote are not the people who build the room, and the people who build the room heard about the event that morning.
The other kind is the crew. The people who quote are the people who arrive with the truck, hang the lights, run the sound, and stay until the last case is packed. The same team that knows what a product reveal needs from the lighting rig is the team that rigs it, which means the plan fits the room because the people who wrote it have worked in that room before.
As a marketing manager, you know what a quote hides and what it does not. A line item that reads 'audio-visual services' could mean anything, and the découpage — the hourly rate, the overtime threshold, the transport fee, the operator minimum — is where the budget breaks or holds. The question to ask is: whose crew am I hiring, and have they worked together before?
Load-in and access shape the possible
A second-floor venue with no service lift and a marble staircase limits what can be brought in. A terrace accessible only through the dining room means load-in happens before the room is dressed or after it is emptied, never during. A historic building with a listed interior may not allow anything fixed to the walls or ceiling, which rules out most rigging.
The load-in route and the access hours determine the rig. If the only way in is a passenger lift and the only window is the two hours before doors, the technical setup has to be light and fast. If the venue allows a morning build, the rig can be more substantial, but only if the ceiling can take it and the power can feed it.
Ask the venue what the previous event brought in and how. If they have never hosted an event with a stage and a lighting rig, you are the test case, and test cases discover problems expensively.
The decision you face now
You are deciding whether to hire a production team or coordinate the pieces yourself. The answer depends on whether you have worked in the venue before, whether the programme is simple or staged, and whether you know what the lighting and sound need to do for the camera.
Before you call anyone, settle the format, name the programme, and see the venue with the load-in in mind. The conversation that follows will be shorter and cheaper if the brief describes what actually has to happen, not what the deck says it will look like.
This guide was written by the crew at After 5 Events — the people who quote, rig and run the evening, not the people who forward the brief and add a margin.