How far ahead to book entertainment for a company party

The question arrives as a search because the person asking it has never done this before, and the answers it finds were written for weddings or for touring musicians. This is the corporate version, written for the office manager, the executive assistant or the HR lead who was handed the party, with the calendar the way Denver’s venues and planners describe it themselves.

Denver venues that publish planning guides say the same thing: the Friday and Saturday nights from the first week of December to the week before Christmas are the most-asked-for dates on the corporate calendar, and the venues with reputations fill them six to nine months out. Their advice to companies is to search for a December venue between January and March, and their warning is that a search begun in September or October is choosing among what’s left. What’s left is usually a Thursday, or January.

The entertainment follows the venue in most companies’ order of decisions, which is why a band gets asked in October for a date the venue confirmed in June. That works more often than the venue calendar would suggest, because a band’s calendar isn’t a ballroom’s, but the band you want and the date you have aren’t the same question, and the earlier they’re asked together the better the answer.

A growing share of companies hold the holiday party in January, and several Denver-area venues now write their holiday packages to run from the middle of November into the third week of January and past it. A company that begins planning in October has a real January option that didn’t exist a few years ago, and the January office party ideas post covers what that evening can be.

Galas and award nights work a year out, because the venue and the honorees are settled first and the committee meets monthly. Sales kickoffs and internal meetings for January and February are planned in the autumn, often by the same person planning the holiday party, in the same weeks. Customer conferences at the convention center are booked years ahead by the company, and the after-party is booked by the hospitality team or a destination management company in the months before. Summer picnics and client appreciation evenings are planned in spring for June through August, and the outdoor venues, the parks, the pavilions and the brewery patios, take reservations early in the year.

The pattern across all of them is that the entertainment is the last vendor asked and the one with the least fixed calendar, which is an advantage if you use it.

When first-time planners ask the corporate boards how to start, the most agreed-on answer is a sequence: budget, then venue, then food and drink, then activities or entertainment, then decorations. The second most agreed-on answer is to start earlier than feels necessary, and the planners who have done it more than once say they begin in July or August for a December party.

The sequence is right, with one amendment. Ask the entertainment question at the venue stage, because the venue’s sound cap, its load-in window and its power decide the size of the act you can book there, and a ballroom with a hard decibel limit and a restaurant with one outlet are different music problems. The technical page lists what each size needs, written to be forwarded to a venue before you sign with it.

Vendor onboarding, a purchase order, a certificate of insurance, a W-9. All of it is available and none of it is fast, and it’s the reason a booking that was agreed in a week takes a month to sign. Start the vendor setup when you shortlist, and the music becomes the one vendor line that’s settled early. The corporate page sets out the finance path, and how a booking works walks the steps in order.

The date and the venue, or the two or three venues still in play. The headcount, roughly. Whether there’s a program, and what’s in it: remarks, awards, a raffle, a video, an auction. Whether the evening should end on a dance floor or at the coffee. And the venue’s rules if you have them, the decibel cap and the curfew and the load-in window. With those, a band can tell you the size the night needs and a number for it. Without them, you get a range and another round of email.

What live music costs across this market, size by size, is set out in the cost guide, and the way a quote is put together is in how to read a band quote. Whether a specific date is free is a two-line email: the date and the venue.