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.

Weddings have existed since time immemorial, of course – the majority of civilized human history – and it can be tempting to think that there are only so many ways to go about staging one. But this simply isn’t the case, and event planners must be sure not to fall prey to that sort of narrow, stuck-inside-the-box perspective.

There are a variety of ways a creative planner can bring refreshing elements into such a well-established occasion, and wedding tech is chief among them.  Alongside tried-and-true elements such as live music and a custom step and repeat banner for photo opportunities, tech enhancements will help make a truly unforgettable wedding.

Make the most of a wedding hashtag 
In many ways, social media has become one of the primary forms of cultural currency in modern society. It’s certainly become important to preserving the memories of weddings, with an “official” hashtag for Instagram and Twitter posts about the affair being one of the most visible methods of categorization.

Bridal Guide recommended using features such as printable cards to send with invitations and incorporating the hashtag into various event decorations that will be shown off on the big day. This also represents a perfect opportunity to put the custom backdrop to good use by having the hashtag be its main design, for fun group photos.

New twists on old videos 
Wedding videos, in and of themselves, are nothing new. The average young couple might be cringing instinctively at the thought of their parents’ low-quality wedding tape (not to mention all of the outdated fashions on display). But now wedding planners can preserve memories of these big days in truly fascinating ways, due to how much technology has progressed. The Knot cited such radical examples as overhead video taken by drones, live streams over Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, GoPro cameras mounted to corsages, and even robots equipped with cameras roaming around the grounds of the wedding venue. Any one of these approaches is sure to produce candid and fascinating footage that couples will want to watch again and again in the future.

3-D printed decorations and favors 
In the last several years, the concept of 3-D printing has emerged in the marketplace, at first seeing its most frequent deployments in the manufacturing sector. But it quickly spread to become applicable in a wide variety of consumer-level applications as well, and according to PC Magazine, wedding party favors and decorations are among them.

Offering 3-D printed favors provides the opportunity to create gifts that will truly stand out to attendees, because they simply won’t have seen anything like them before. Whether event planners enlist the services of a printing firm or use one of the various consumer-grade 3-D printers on their own, they can fabricate cards, ornaments, banners, novelty cooking tools and any number of other knickknacks. This will be sure to entertain guests in an unexpected way and allow everyone – not just the newlyweds – to fondly remember the occasion.

In the business world, certain events – grand openings, new product or service debuts, corporate parties and so on – can seem pro forma after a while, if consistent efforts to make them stand out are not applied. Keeping such proceedings constantly fresh is key for event planners. Enhancing these varied shindigs with aesthetically appealing features, like a custom step and repeat banner, can put you well on your way to planning an occasion few will forget. But sometimes you need some extra oomph – and that’s exactly what event technology can provide.

Of course, it’s not like you can simply set up a dazzling light show or devise a few digital marketing bells and whistles and expect those frills to automatically work for every occasion. Context and setting both matter. Let’s take a look at a few of the biggest event tech trends projected for 2018 and identify where they’ll perform most effectively:

Custom apps
According to a 2017 Gartner study, 73 percent of organizations surveyed confirmed that they’d either completed or made significant headway developing their own mobile apps – a 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Depending on the company, the purposes of such apps will vary considerably. However, if this mobile software’s features will be germane to a product rollout or an industry conference primarily sponsored by a single business, there’s no reason to exclude the app from the event, Eventbrite noted. For example, this sponsoring company could provide the timetable for specific conference events or connect users to profiles for the major speakers and products occupying marquee spots on the docket. Whatever the ultimate use, companies’ proprietary apps are too versatile a tool to disregard when planning events.

Various applications for RFID
The range of applications for radio-frequency identification technologies broadly expanded over the course of the past decade. RFID tags and readers are now used for paperless movie tickets, social media promotions and a great deal more.

For the purposes of event planning, RFID will certainly draw attention as a way to manage registration and admission. The systems’ potential for collecting user data for future sales and marketing efforts should also be taken into account. Last but not least, planners could merge high and low tech by using RF tags in conjunction with customized backdrops for a photo booth-style attraction that facilitates a productive call to action on the user’s part.

Livestreaming video over social media
Tools for streaming live video now exist across all of the most prominent social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. While a real-time chronicling of an organizational event won’t be ideal in all instances, on most occasions, it provides the potential for a veritable gold mine of promotional opportunities. In a holiday party, for example, event planners can help company leaders devise a catchy hashtag for social media commenters to deploy in response to the video, personifying the firm and offering a positive example of business culture that might help recruitment efforts down the line.

Fashion, in and of itself, is something of an abstract concept that’s not easy to define. But when it comes to fashion shows – those opulent, media-heavy spectacles that provide most average people their closest glimpse of the haute couture world – there are certain elements and features that are traditionally expected to be part of the whole package.

Event professionals who are planning a fashion show, or perhaps a party patterned after such a red carpet event, shouldn’t necessarily watch past installments of the annual Victoria’s Secret runway extravaganza and try to copy what they see. Yet it can be beneficial for event planners to take stock of commonalities they observe among past fashion shows and incorporate these elements into their own work.

The ubiquitous importance of theme
When you stop and think about it, a fashion show is basically a party of sorts, right? And as we’ve previously discussed, every party worth its salt has a theme. As explained by the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in a guest post for DECA Direct, whichever theme you choose should complement the clothing that is being showcased. As such, if the designers parading their wares intend to emphasize bold color combinations or nontraditional fabric arrays, the show will need a theme that’s equally bold.

It should be noted that in this case, theme can’t be something elementary like “winter wonderland.” Arresting aesthetics like steampunk or the nostalgic appeal of art deco are more along the lines of what you should try. Elements ranging from lighting schemes to custom backdrops and the colors of items used for stage dressing must adhere to this theme. Also, as an EventMB guest post noted, when planners work with designers known for iconic logos or imagery, such as Chanel’s instantly recognizable double Cs, such signatures should be incorporated into the decor if possible.

The perfect stage
Even those of us not entirely familiar with high fashion most likely understand the visual power of the runway. As such, choosing an existing stage – or creating one from scratch – that allows models to best showcase themselves and the apparel is even more important than the venue itself.

A fashion show stage needs at least one straight path to serve as the runway. Beyond that, it can extend from offstage into a rounded platform, take a U- or T-shape, zigzag or remain a straight line. The theme and decorations you’ve chosen, as well as the dimensions of the venue, will help your narrow your options.

Assembling the perfect crew
Alongside the event’s contracted models and the stalwart members of your event planning firm, you’ll need to bring on certain specialized personnel to ensure a fashion show goes off without a hitch, according to Mask.

Hair and makeup artists, costuming professionals, backup seamstresses (in case of pre-runway wardrobe malfunctions) and lighting and sound designers experienced in fashion shows will all be necessary. Also, at least one member of the crew should be tasked with stage management duties – keeping models’ walks in line with the established schedule and so on.

With these essential best practices, event planners can create fashion shows that will truly wow their audiences.