Staging

Now the fun really starts....its time to get your home or venue ready for your fabulous event. As you are decorating, preparing food and drinks, and anticipating your guests arrival; you are probably already in the process of staging your home. This is one step in the planning process that is sometimes overlooked or sometimes done mindlessly, however it is a key step. What staging does for your event is it allows for traffic patterns that let your guests enjoy your party to the fullest. When your home or venue is properly staged, you will notice that guests can easily maneuver around food buffets, drink stations, and still enjoy being able to mingle with one another. So here are a few tips to make staging your party, no matter how big or small, as easy as possible.


• The main thing to keep in mind with staging is that you want to space out the places where most guest will congregate. For example, you will want your food buffet or appetizer table in one area and your drink station in another area of the room.

• Another thing to keep in mind is that you will probably want to move furniture around to make the room more open.

• One activity that can help if you are having trouble staging is to take a large piece of butcher paper and make a drawing of what the room looks like, where the furniture is, and where you plan to place food and drink stations. Once you have drawn this out, play around with changing up the room configuration and see what feels best to you.

• Another great thing to do when you are planning how to stage your event with your drawings is to look at traffic patterns. Get different color markers and draw out traffic patterns that your guests may use. This will let you see if people will easily be able to move throughout your party.

• Keep in mind that most of your guests will gather in circular patterns to talk and mingle, so make sure that there is enough room for groups to gather and talk.

Remember that staging is key to transforming your home or venue from the everyday to the special for your party. This step in the planning process is something you can do to ensure that all your hard work doesn't go to waste and your guests fully enjoy the event. Happy staging!!!