Which Contracts for Event Planners are a Must

Contracts for Event Planners. Flowers, band, caterer… contract? One of these is not like the others. Yet, without it, the entire event you are planning could easily deflate faster than the individual souffles. The one thing an event planner cannot go into business without is a contract. It may not smell nice like flowers or taste good, but it will save your bacon and pay for itself over and over.

Contracts for Event Planners. A good contract will let you sleep at night (and party all day)

Contracts usually get a bad rap from everyone except lawyers. Most people assume that lawyers love contracts so much because they are a source of revenue. The real reason lawyers love contracts is because, when done right, they can save clients a lot of time, pain, and money down the road. When done wrong, you might as well start banking away money for the inevitable litigation that will eventually pop up.

A good contract essentially sets forth the rules that the two parties are going to follow for the course of their relationship. Moreover, the process of drafting this good contract also forces the parties to discuss the terms of their relationship – think of it as pre-marital counseling for business. It also forces the parties to discuss the terms of their dissolution or what happens when the relationship comes to an end. Business is not personal in this regards, and contracts allow parties to hash out in neutral territory what they are and are not willing to do or tolerate as part of the benefit they are receiving from the arrangement.

Contracts for Event Planners

Event planners are particularly in need of good contracts with their clients as well as their own vendors. When things go wrong, the contract is going to be the place to start to figure out who needs to be responsible for the error. In the event planning business, there will be things that go wrong and miscommunications that send flowers to a conference and a groom’s cake to a funeral. This is where a strong contract will provide some defense to the party that erred as well as the party who was fouled.

Chances are if you have a contract, it is fairly short, both in length and details. Effective contracts do not need to be ten pages and single-spaced to be enforceable and cover most eventualities. However, a good contract does need to cover the basics which for event planners are fairly simple, yet often lacking.

The Gourmet Kitchen Sink Approach

The key with any contract is to cover the areas that are absolutely going to be implicated in the relationship and arrangement. For event planners, this means being exquisitely detailed about who is going to be doing what, where, when, and how. For example, if the client has not elected to use the event planner to arrange transportation for the event, this needs to be spelled out in the contract, down to the statement that the client has taken responsibility for this task and the event planner has no further obligation in this area. Things left unsaid will be said later, usually by a judge who is called upon to decide the dispute between the two parties as to what they originally intended. It is far easier and less expensive to be clear upfront in the contract than make more work for the judicial system.

Other important areas to cover in a contract are what happens if a client cancels the event at a certain point before the event, particularly to the deposit paid by the client. What happens if the event planner is unable to secure a venue in a specified amount of time? When is the client required to pay, and in what amounts?

The good news is that drafting a contract does not have to be an epic event. We know contracts, and we know how to draft enforceable and usable contracts for event planners just like you. Call 305-921-0440 or email us at [email protected].

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