How to successfully plan a ball

A ball is an impor­tant event for any organ­i­sa­tion, whether it is a com­pa­ny, a school, an NGO or a club. Plan­ning such an evening needs to be a suc­cess, oth­er­wise the pri­ma­ry goal (fundrais­ing, cer­e­mo­ny, awards pre­sen­ta­tion, etc.) may be jeop­ar­dised.

Plan­ning a suc­cess­ful ball requires a lot of hard work and mak­ing the right man­age­ment deci­sions. Every­thing should be done so that your par­tic­i­pants feel spe­cial and pam­pered. Sev­er­al tools and plan­ning choic­es will help you opti­mise your event’s man­age­ment there­by ensur­ing its suc­cess. Here you can find our rec­om­men­da­tions to plan a suc­cess­ful ball.

Understand who will attend

Depend­ing on the type of organ­i­sa­tion and the evening’s goals, you will need to man­age sev­er­al types of guests. You must absolute­ly know them: who are they? What is their social stand­ing? Where will they be trav­el­ling from? How many will attend? etc. This infor­ma­tion is key to mak­ing good plan­ning deci­sions for your event.

Choose an original theme/concept that is consistent with the evening

The theme or con­cept of the evening will great­ly influ­ence its suc­cess, since it direct­ly impacts atten­dees’ per­cep­tion and first impres­sion. Through your choice of theme, you can gen­er­ate emo­tions and behav­iours that can help you achieve your goals as well as ensure the suc­cess of your ball. This is why you should be cre­ative in that area and choose an orig­i­nal theme that is con­sis­tent with the goals of the evening. What­ev­er the theme, make sure that it cre­ates a pleas­ant, friend­ly and unique atmos­phere for your guests. The theme will need to be either clear­ly dis­played or implied on your online tick­ets.

Choose a convenient, attractive and easily accessed venue

The venue sets the tone for your evening in terms of atten­dance and guest expe­ri­ence. Know­ing your guests (as men­tioned ear­li­er in this post) will be par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful in the choice of venue. What­ev­er your choice, the venue of your ball must be:

• Easy to access: you should take into account the loca­tion of your guests and there­fore avail­abil­i­ty of means of trans­port to bring your guests to your event with­out dif­fi­cul­ties;
• Attrac­tive: the cho­sen venue must be cus­tomised to the event, reflect the evening’s objec­tive, be unique but not nec­es­sar­i­ly too unusu­al.
• Con­ve­nient: your ball should take place in a loca­tion where guests can eas­i­ly move around, chat and meet-up.

Choosing a simple management tool to create, send and manage invitations

You will also need to plan invi­ta­tions for your ball. They are the first ele­ment that the guests will see about your event. Use an online invi­ta­tion man­age­ment tool to make this eas­i­er for you to organ­ise. It will enable you to cus­tomise your invi­ta­tions and man­age your var­i­ous guest lists. As a true com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel, your invi­ta­tions should be eye-catch­ing and clear about the date, loca­tion and time, the theme and the pro­gramme of the evening.

Set-up an easy-to-find online box office

Sell­ing online tick­ets for your ball is also an impor­tant part of ensur­ing a suc­cess­ful event. To do this, you should choose an easy-to-find, easy-to-use tick­et­ing and reg­is­tra­tion tool offer­ing enough fea­tures to facil­i­tate plan­ning and man­age­ment of your ball. With the right online tick­et­ing tool, you should be able to:

• Eas­i­ly cre­ate and cus­tomise your tick­ets;
• Inte­grate an online tick­et­ing plug-in to your web­site or be able to cre­ate a ded­i­cat­ed page for your event;
• Safe­ly sell tick­ets and man­age your var­i­ous cat­e­gories of guests;
• Track tick­et sales stats in real time;
• Export your event’s data eas­i­ly.

Choose the right entertainment

Enter­tain­ment is a high­ly mem­o­rable part of the ball for some of your guests, so you should real­ly think about your choice. Take into con­sid­er­a­tion the cat­e­go­ry of guests that you expect, the goals of the evening (some enter­tain­ment could divert from your goals) and choose one that align with these aspects. There are many enter­tain­ment options: live shows, auc­tions, lot­ter­ies, etc. their goal should always be to cre­ate a mem­o­rable time for your guests.

Choose your food and drinks

Food and drinks should relate to the theme and goals of your ball. Cus­tomised meals and drinks will cre­ate a last­ing impres­sion and leave your guests with a nice mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, ensure that your menu is var­ied (and takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the types of guests and the evening’s theme) and plan veg­e­tar­i­an options.

Now, all you have to do is apply these tips and adjust them to the specifics of your ball for guar­an­teed suc­cess!

Ready to organ­ise your own suc­cess­ful ball? Start now with Weezevent:

Read more