Planner guide

Event planning checklist — in the order that actually works

Generic checklists are sorted by date. This one is sorted by dependency: what has to be true before the next decision is safe to make. It is the sequence a production company runs for corporate events and conferences, and each venue step points at the facts this directory lists for 453 Colorado venues.

Updated 2026-08-29. Companion guide: questions to ask a venue before you sign.

Phase 1 — Define the event before you touch a venue

First, because every later decision depends on it

Most checklists start with "book the venue". Booking before you know the format is how you end up with a ballroom that can't do breakouts or a stream nobody budgeted for.

  • Write the outcome in one sentence: what should attendees know, decide or do afterward?
  • Fix the format: in-person, hybrid or virtual — and whether remote attendees are an audience or participants.
  • Set the shape: plenary only, or plenary plus breakouts; number of rooms running at once; single day or multi-day.
  • Estimate headcount as a range, and note which layout you need (theater, rounds, classroom, reception).
  • Decide what gets recorded, streamed or captured for reuse — it changes the room and the crew.
  • Name the decision-maker for money and the decision-maker for content. Two people, not a committee.

Phase 2 — Build the budget as a model, not a number

Before venue shortlisting, so you can compare venues on the same basis

Venues price in different currencies — rental, food-and-beverage minimums, service charges, labor, AV policy fees. A model lets you compare them; a single total does not.

  • Lines for venue, food and beverage, production/AV, staffing, travel and rooms, content and design, contingency.
  • Decide what "production" includes for you: sound, lighting, video, streaming, recording, post-event content.
  • Write down the AV policy assumption: outside crew welcome, fee for outside crew, or in-house only. It moves the biggest line.
  • Add the fees venues add: service charges and taxes on F&B, overtime, security, insurance certificates.
  • Hold a real contingency and decide who can spend it.

Phase 3 — Source the venue on the facts that change the budget

Once format, headcount range and budget model exist

Shortlist on vendor policy, catering policy, capacity by layout and technical fit — the fields this directory lists for 453 Colorado venues, or marks "ask us" where we could not confirm.

  • Filter by region and capacity band first, then by outside-AV policy and catering policy — the two fields most venue lists omit.
  • Site-visit every finalist with the questions that change a floor plan: power, rigging, ceiling height, wired internet, load-in, HVAC noise.
  • Get the vendor policy and any outside-crew fees in writing before you compare proposals.
  • Ask for capacity by your layout, minus stage, screens, camera positions and registration.
  • Confirm load-in and strike windows and what an extra hour costs; confirm dock, freight elevator and storage.
  • Read the contract for minimums, attrition, service charges, cancellation and insurance requirements.

Phase 4 — Production and vendors, in the order they constrain each other

As soon as the venue is signed — the venue's policies decide who you can hire

The venue contract sets the vendor rules; the production plan sets the room plan; catering and staffing fit around both.

  • Brief the production partner with the outcome sentence, format, headcount range, room facts from the site visit and the venue's AV policy.
  • Agree the room plan: stage position, screen size and count, camera positions, audience sightlines, registration flow.
  • Book streaming and recording deliverables with the crew that owns the room plan, not separately.
  • Confirm caterer eligibility against the venue's policy or approved list; place F&B against the minimum.
  • Hire staffing, security and rentals only after the room plan exists — they size to it.
  • Collect every vendor's insurance certificate the venue requires.

Phase 5 — Content, speakers and the run of show

In parallel with vendors; frozen before technical rehearsal

The run of show is the document the crew works from. Every slide format, video, remote speaker and Q&A decides a cable or a camera.

  • Collect speaker decks and videos in the formats your production partner asks for, by a real deadline.
  • Write the run of show to the minute: sessions, transitions, walk-ups, videos, Q&A, breaks.
  • Decide how remote speakers join and test each one on the actual platform before the day.
  • Plan signage, registration and wayfinding against the venue's floor plan.
  • Decide what the post-event content is — recap film, session recordings, social cuts — and shoot for it, not after it.

Phase 6 — Rehearse, run, strike, measure

The day before, the day of, and the week after

A technical rehearsal in the real room with the real files is the cheapest insurance an event can buy.

  • Technical rehearsal: every deck, every video, every microphone, every remote link, in the room.
  • Walk the load-in route and the attendee route with the venue contact; confirm who holds the keys and the Wi-Fi.
  • Day-of: one person owns the run of show, one owns the venue relationship, one owns the crew.
  • Strike on the agreed window; photograph the room at hand-back.
  • Within a week: deliver recordings and content, reconcile the budget model against invoices, write down what the venue did and didn't do.

Start Phase 3 with venues that already list the facts

Vendor policy, catering policy and capacity band, confirmed or marked ask us, on every profile. Browse by region, by venue type, or filter the full directory.

Planning a conference or corporate event in Colorado?

Earth Coast Productions runs this sequence for clients — venue site visits, room plans, production, streaming and post-event content — and will tell you plainly what a venue's policies do to your budget.

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