Importance of a Walk Through

Angela Schoening of Love and Lemons Events is here today as a contributor to the AllSeated blog to share the importance of site visits and walk throughs.

No matter how many times I’ve worked at a venue, I like to do a final walk through with the client prior to their event. It’s really the icing on the cake of the last several months of planning. You take all of your organized notes, AllSeated floorplans, and timelines and then literally walk through the venue as if you’re attending the event on the day of.

The importance of a walk through cannot be stressed enough! Here are some ways to go about your walk through:

Put yourself in a guest’s shoes.

Where do you park? Is access to the venue and event site easy to find once they arrive?

Once inside, now what?

This is where you’ll catch any missing details like, “Oh! We Should actually have a sign pointing to restrooms”, because you’ve realized it’s not as obvious to someone who’s never been there.

Or maybe you’re hosting a wedding with a non-traditional timeline and you realize at the walk-through that you need a written program posted big for everyone to see the activities of the day.

Walking the flow from start to finish as a guest is a great way to ensure that the day will be seamless. Maybe you realize that moving guests from the ballroom for toasts, to the patio for cake cutting and then back to the ballroom for the first dance is not actually the best plan for your flow — aren’t you glad you figured this out ahead of time rather than the day of the event?!

Put yourself in your host of honor’s shoes.

Whether your client is a bride or person celebrating their 50th birthday, the order of events and event flow will impact them as well. Repeat the above steps to see how they may affect your host to ensure that everyone feels comfortable on the special day.

The whole process of the walk through shouldn’t take more than about 30 minutes depending on how many edits you make and how many times you feel necessary to do the run through.

If you haven’t started this practice already, please try it out and tell us how you found it helpful to your planning process. We love to hear success stories!

Learn more about Love and Lemons Events by visiting their website. Thanks Angela!