Pre-event planning
Timelines, vendor scoping, budget scaffolding, and contingency thinking before anyone RSVPs. The structural work most events skip and then feel the absence of.
Event Planning & Experience Design
06/ Events
Pre-event planning, experience design, styling direction, and playbooks robust enough for your coordinator to run. I design the event; someone else runs the floor.
Five moving parts.
Experience design
Flow, pacing, guest journey, sensory choices — the "what will people feel and remember" layer. Not just what happens; what it feels like when it does.
Decor & styling
Creative direction for the physical space: mood, materials, palette, styling notes. A visual brief clear enough for a florist, stylist, or fabricator to execute cleanly.
Coordinator-ready playbooks
A handoff document any day-of coordinator can run: run-of-show, vendor contacts, cue sheets, contingency plans. Written so nothing lives only in my head.
Handoff & advisory
Brief the coordinator, answer questions in the week-of, stay on call during setup. The plan doesn't get dropped at the door — it gets landed.
One recent event.
Corporate holiday dinner · 2025
80-person corporate holiday dinner in a small city
- Format
- Corporate holiday dinner · 80 guests · Small-city venue with limited vendor access · 2025
- Problem
- No plan, no defined vibe, minimal vendor access in the local market, and no articulated guest experience.
- What I did
- Pre-event planning, experience design, decor direction and build. Handed off a full itinerary and cue sheet to the on-site coordinator so the plan ran cleanly without me holding the walkie-talkie.
- Outcome
- Called the company's best event in years. Repeat requests to plan future events have kept coming in.
03 / A clear boundary
I'm not the day-of lead.
This is the part most planners fudge. I don't. My deliverable is a plan and a playbook that hand off cleanly — not my presence on the floor at 6pm.
- I'm not on-site running the event floor.
- I don't cue vendors, manage staff, or hold the walkie-talkie in real time.
- I don't act as day-of coordinator, MC, or point-of-contact for guests.
- The playbook is written so your coordinator (or venue lead) can run it without me.
Good fit
- You have an event with real stakes and want the thinking done well before the week-of
- You already have (or will hire) a day-of coordinator or venue lead
- You care about how the event feels, not just what happens on it
- You want a plan you could actually hand to someone else
Probably not a fit
- You need someone on-site running the event floor
- You want a full-service planner who also acts as day-of lead
- The event is next week and the ask is execution, not design
- You already have the plan and just need hands