Whether you are a professional planner or you got stuck with the task for your business, knowing how to plan a corporate event can be a tricky endeavor to ensure that you cover all of the details. From food, to location, to atmosphere and more, the perfect event takes planning and effort to come off seamlessly.

If the burden of planning a corporate event has fallen into your lap you are no doubt stressed out. Event planning is difficult, particularly for amateurs and those who have never planned an event before. Planning your company’s event involves little more than following a series of steps common among professional corporate event planners. Follow these steps closely and no one will know that your company’s event wasn’t planned by the pros. 1. Come up with a theme. Regardless of what the event is for -- training, morale, team building -- there needs to be a theme holding the event together. Deciding on what your event’s theme is will guide all other aspects of planning. 2. Set a rough budget. You won’t need to line item every single point on the budget. You should, however, have a vague idea of how much will be spent all told. In addition, you should have vague estimates of how much different aspects of the budget will cost, such as food, lodging, hall rental, entertainment and other major parts of the event.