As everyone prepares to spend time with family this Holiday Season, event professionals face an age-old struggle; how to describe the events industry. At first mention, well-meaning extended family members assume a career in events involves wedding planning or concerts. It can be difficult to articulate the nuances and complexities of event production. Thankfully, we’ve come up with a simple way to make this annual conversation less awkward.

When you think about it, producing events is pretty similar to the process of preparing a holiday meal. Consider:

Event professionals have to manage factors like scheduling, vendors, messaging, and costs. Planning, preparing, and hosting a holiday meal involves much of the same. It requires delegating responsibility, coordinating various times and temperatures, and balancing numerous dietary restrictions and preferences to create a meal everyone can enjoy.

At many holiday meals, attendees are responsible for cooking separate dishes that combine to make one meal. Preparing each dish requires a particular sort of expertise. Cooking a turkey is very different from baking a pumpkin pie. Similarly, putting on a successful event requires coordinating an array of event professionals with specific expertise and responsibilities.

Although one can plan the meal as carefully as possible, last-minute challenges will always arise. Someone brings an unexpected guest, forgets their assigned dish, or forgets to press “start” on the oven timer. In the moment, you realize you don’t have enough gravy for the mashed potatoes, the milk is spoiled, or the plates don’t all fit on the table. Last-minute solutions must be found for things to go successfully – and this is where event professionals shine! We substitute milk with half n’ half, find space for one more at the table, and whip up another batch of gravy from pan drippings.

Even when things do go as planned, transitioning a meal from the kitchen to the tabletop is a process. Although there’s a way things are supposed to be arranged, once everything’s been laid out, you realize the cranberry sauce is hidden behind the bread rolls, so you move it somewhere more visible. Event professionals make similar changes on-site for the first time – thinking through an event and making small adjustments to ensure everyone at the table has a wonderful experience.

We hope you find this analogy helpful this holiday season. From all of us at LEO Events, we wish you a holiday season full of joy, cheer, and of course, expertly planned meals!