Leaving your Christmas entertainment bookings until the last few weeks of November. All the decent talent and event professionals are all booked up for Christmas by July/August time.
Not having decent sound and lighting. The two most important things for running a successful event is being seen and being heard. 80% of the time the in-house built in venue sound system is not good enough.
The wrong timings for your entertainment, speeches, food, music or awards. There is a correct time to start your dance band or DJ.  There is a correct time to hold your live auction, company awards, speeches.  There is a good and bad time for fundraising, playing corporate videos and live comedy acts.  We can advise what goes where.
Organising your event on the same day as a major event that will affect attendance, ticket sales or availability. Don’t book your event on FA Cup, Champions League or World Cup final day.  Don’t book your party in a Wembley Hotel when Taylor Swift is playing next-door or in Edinburgh when the Fringe is taking place.
Many times the wrong venue is booked for a certain event.  The room layout is wrong, the audience have bad sight-lines, meaning they have obstructed views of the main event area, the room dedicated for the meet and greet or drinks reception is too small, no parking, no local hotel rooms, bad transport links, no wifi or phone signal, sound limiters, early curfews, no external entertainment allowed to be booked, meaning you have to use their own trusted list of suppliers, no load in bay for trucks and lorries needing to park up close by to deliver the production or even booking a venue that has another event the same day next-door.
Our favourite was a client who booked a juggler and the venue had very low ceilings, or the time a caricaturist turned up to draw everyone and it was a masquerade ball.