Your little girl is all grown up, and now it’s time to plan her Sweet 16 party. If she and her friends are all about glitz and Hollywood glamour, a red carpet theme might be just the ticket!

Narrow down the theme
Your daughter (like most teenagers) probably has very definite likes and dislikes. You can make the theme more specific to her interests, such as a favorite movie, TV show, musical act or even a book or favorite decade.

Atmosphere is everything
To give any Sweet 16 that red carpet atmosphere, use a personalized, professional background for selfies and group shots. This will give your daughter and her friends the opportunity to create tangible memories that reflect the day. You can choose from a number of pre-made templates, or the Sign Art team can help you create an original, custom banner. Our backdrops are also available in packages that include a red carpet runner for the full effect.

Set a dress code
Guests (and party helpers) should all be dressed to the nines to reinforce the theme. Make sure to include this in the invitation.

Invite the “Paparazzi”
Whether you hire professional photographers or just ask a few friends for a favor, have them ready to flash the bulbs down the red carpet as guests arrive.

Now for the practical stuff…

Stick to a budget
Whatever event you’re planning, whether it’s a Sweet 16, a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah, little details add up and it’s easy to let costs get out of hand if you don’t have a plan beforehand.

Pick a date
Although you should hold the party around your daughter’s birthday, it doesn’t need to fall on the exact day. Choose a day that doesn’t coincide with a holiday.

Bring adult supervision
Even though they’re not little kids any more, 16-year-olds are still minors. Include chaperones who will help you make sure everyone’s having a fun and safe time.

Event planning can be a hectic and sometimes frenetically paced profession. It’s the nature of the business. After all, successful planners function as the strong, guiding hand that keeps every aspect of a given event running smoothly: from catering and seating arrangements to musical accompaniments and custom step and repeat backdrops.

Also, on some level, the challenges posed are invigorating to the most skillful practitioners of this trade. But at some point, a real surplus of stress is all but guaranteed to cause some serious problems for a planner on both a personal and professional level.

With this in mind, it’s well worth event planners’ time to consider steps they can take to limit the intrusion of stress into their daily routines during wedding season or any other busy time of the year for their business. Today, let’s take a look at a few essential tips and strategies:

Make detailed plans in advance 
Predicting the precise outcome of future events is often a recipe for disappointment, mostly because it’s rarely possible. There will be some spontaneous happenings that throw you for a loop almost no matter what. However, you can minimize the likelihood of the unexpected by a considerable margin if you start planning the event as far in advance as possible, according to Eventbrite.

This extends to multiple aspects of the process: budgeting, choosing the venue and contracts with third-party vendors. Regarding the latter, it’s also important at this stage to ensure all contracts are fully detailed so future disputes don’t arise.

Simplify the menu 
There’s a balancing act involved here, because you must accommodate tastes and dietary restrictions with your food offerings and can’t be too narrow. Nevertheless, Evite recommends keeping the menu fairly simple, using one or two adventurous choices and a few old standbys for the rest.

Apply a similar philosophy to the beverage selection, using the essentials – beer, wine, soft drinks, water, coffee – and maybe a craft cocktail or two. A quality caterer will help you figure all of this out in no time.

Finish setup early 
Circling back to the matter of unpredictability, don’t forget that problems can surface just before an event’s scheduled start time. This possibility behooves planners to finish all setup tasks several hours before the party begins, according to Advantage.

Doing so affords you the opportunity to keep an eye out for last-minute crises and also project a cool, calm and collected exterior, so that your clients feel their faith in your abilities has been rewarded.

Don’t forget about self-care 
It’s easy to become extremely wrapped up in all of the ins and outs of planning a wedding, corporate holiday party, charitable banquet or any other large-scale event. This sometimes can’t be avoided, but it doesn’t have to be a massive source of stress that impugns your physical and mental health.

Event Manager Blog suggests sticking to a healthy diet, finding time for exercise, getting plenty of sleep and implementing other basic but essential self-care strategies to mitigate the possibility of becoming burned out by the rigors of putting an event together.

Some people excel when afforded plenty of time to plan an important happening. Others, by virtue of distractibility or quick-wittedness (or a mixture of both) thrive by putting things together at the last minute. The event planning profession requires that its best practitioners opt for the former strategy over the latter. But sometimes circumstances dictate that you can’t have the planning time you’d usually want.

This doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, though – far from it. You will simply need to be crafty and consider taking advantage of certain decorations and resources that involve quick set-up times, such as bold and striking custom backdrops. Let’s examine those and a number of other essential practices for last-minute planning:

Take advantage of established connections
All successful business dealings are, in essence, personal relationships. Your linen supplier for table settings might be a faceless corporation to others, but your interactions are with Sarah in sales, with whom you have small talk about your favorite new mystery novels in between placing orders.

Connections like this are vital in last-minute planning situations, according to SmartMeetings. Vendors and partners who see you as a personal acquaintance or a good friend will be more likely to go above and beyond the call of duty to save your bacon – maybe even bending a rule once in a great while. So treasure the close relationships you have with people in your supply chain and go right to them if things are behind schedule.

At Sign Art Etc., if you really need that quick turnaround, we can design, produce and ship your display in one day — whether we know you personally or not!

Keep hold of a checklist
When aspects of an event are being changed not long before its scheduled start date and time, chances are some of your staff – not to mention the client – will be worried about what isn’t finished. While understandable, they can afford to lose their heads, and you simply cannot.

A great way to avoid such a fate is keeping a checklist with you at all times, whether it’s plain old paper or using your smartphone’s notepad function. Check this list as often as needed review overall progress, but tackle tasks one at a time to avoid confusion. Focus on confirming that all of the event’s moving parts are in order, particularly if there’s any tech involved, according to Eventbrite.

Be creative and flexible
Event plans can change for any number of reasons, most of them not specifically foreseeable. What’s vital is that you don’t get struck out by these unexpected curveballs. Social Tables recommended being flexible and having backup options – for food, entertainment or whatever else – on deck just in case. You’ll appreciate it greatly when the original band’s singer comes down with cheeseburger-related food poisoning.

Last but not least, consider creative solutions. For example, if you planned to have a mall-style photo booth but the supplier had a problem, a custom step and repeat banner can serve a similar purpose. Event attendees can strike bold poses in front of it that are just as shareable on social media as any trendy photo booth snapshot.