If you don’t deal with entertainment regularly then you probably don’t know where to start when shopping for a wedding band or a juggler or a fortune teller for your party. Maybe you google “Wedding band NYC” and of course you’re immediately assaulted with a list of agents and party bands and you really have no idea where to begin. So where do the professional event planners go when they need quality entertainment that won’t flake on them?

Booking Agents: These folks make a business out of matching events with a suitable entertainer. They will do all of this work for you, and be able to present you with videos of the entertainers they represent. A standard commission is 15% which may be paid by the entertainer or it might be paid by you. Often times agents simply markup the price that the entertainer is charging them to whatever they think they can get from the client. In certain extreme cases this markup is as high as 100% or more, but those cases would be outliers.  This doesn’t mean that you should not use an agent. A good entertainment agency will save you time and will know exactly the right match for your party and only offers professional entertainers with proven track records. But understand that by using a agent, you are paying for their time and knowledge above the price of the talent.

Entertainment listing services: These are websites that allow entertainers to list their services and upload photos, and audio and video clips. They structure it in a database so that when you, the client, are looking for say, a Billy Joel impersonator, you type that in, along with your city, and you will have access to all the local talent, in a very orderly format. The second way it works is for you to give all the details of your job, and then the local entertainers would send you price quotes. These listing services usually offer reviews from past clients. My favorite ones are GigMasters and GigSalad. GigMasters even allows you to pay the entertainers through their website but takes a 5% commission to do so.

Referrals: Professional planners will ask around in their network to see if anyone has, for example, a great party band in NYC. Often times they will post these requests online in an appropriate Linked In group such as “Event Planners in NYC” or even post a notice in their Facebook profile. Suppose you are a bride seeking a dueling piano show for your NY wedding, ask your Facebook friends if anyone knows a good dueling show. Most likely they will probably tell you to go…um…HERE

Google: Yes, Professional planners still use google if they have a very specific request that can’t wait for referrals or agents to call back and may not be listed on GigMasters. If you’re willing to put in just a little bit of time going through the resulting websites, you will be connected directly to the entertainer. But how can you tell if they are the real deal? How do you know if they will show up? Well that’s a post for next week.

So you’re planning an event and you want to go beyond the run-of-the-mill DJ or band and give your guests a unique experience that they will remember for a long time. Here are 8 ideas that are sure to be memorable:

1. Hire a speed painter. These artists will paint portraits of your guests so that they have something to take home with them from your event. Great for small intimate events and they can fit into a networking event without distracting anyone.

2. Sushi rolling is something outside of most people’s comfort zone, which might be exactly what you’re after. Hire a sushi chef or two to instruct your guests on how to create the perfect Rainbow Roll.

3. Hire a professional “toastmaster”. This is someone who makes a career out of coming up with the perfect things to say to celebrate your guests and your event. A good toast master will do his research and find out things about honored guests or your company and come up with a story (a long toast) that is uplifting, funny and entertaining. If he or she is really good they might be versed in the art of Champagne Sabrage, or slicing the cork off a Champagne bottle with a sabre. One of my favorite toast masters is Michael Vanderosen.

4. Have a slot car tournament complete with qualifying, elimination and championship races followed by an Awards Ceremony.  Check out Miniature Motorways.

5. Have a mixologist come in and teach your guests how to make the perfect cosmo, or help them come up with their own cocktails. Lychee-pepper martini anyone?

6. Dueling Piano shows work with all audiences. Picture two crazy piano players, with 2 grand pianos, each trying to out do the other, combining requests from your guest with comedy and music. Good dueling shows will do drinking toasts, sing-a-long, clap-a-long and over the top humor. They will bring honored guests up onto the stage to be roasted in front of their friends and colleagues. This is a real icebreaker!

7. Create an Iron Chef competition where there are teams, each with a professional chef leading them. All teams are given the same ingredients and must create a dish, or a meal. You can have a prominent local celebrity chef to judge for the best presentation and taste.

8. Japanese Tea Ceremony lead by a Japanese tea master. These can include a history of the ceremony followed by sharing tea. Just the fact that everyone will be kneeling on the floor around a small table will break the ice, and people will naturally want to talk to each other as typical Western social conventions are set aside.

I have more ideas which I’ll post in future blog articles. If you want information on any of these ideas, please contact us directly at our website.

The first thing people think when they see two grand pianos and a drum set on a stage is, What is this? What’s going to happen? Two people sit down at the pianos. Then the music starts. It’s a song everyone knows. The second pianist gets up and walks to the center of the stage and begins to lead the crowd clapping. Then the chorus comes along, and right at the point where everyone knows the words, the musics stops, both pianists point to the audience and, Voila! Everyone sings! Thus begins an outrageous party of comedy, music and audience participation as both pianists try to out do each other singing and playing their way through audience requests of the hits from the last 40 years.

Then it’s onto a birthday bit, where a birthday boy is called up to the stage and the pianists make up a song that has something to do with his secret passion for cross-dressing, or something equally absurd. And so it continues through the night. If you want to see a short demonstration of what a typical show is like, visit www.NYNYDuelingPianos.com and a 2 minute video will pop up.

Everyone wants their party to be memorable. One fun idea is to hire celebrity impersonators to mingle with your guests. Nothing loosens up a stuffy corporate crowd quite like sharing a cocktails with Gaga or Elvis.

A couple of months ago I was hired to do a Dueling Piano show at Le Meridian Hotel in Philadelphia for a corporate party. What I didn’t know was that they had hired Neil Diamond, Bette Midler and Elton John impersonators to work the party as well. Before we took the stage, I spoke with all three and asked if they would mind singing with us.We figured out what songs we could all do, and then my dueling piano partner and I began our act. While we were performing up on stage, the impersonators were mingling with the guests. After a few songs we invited up Bette (Donna Maxon) to do her version of Doctor Long John. The crowd went nuts! We continued doing our show and then 30 minutes later we brought up Elton who took over the stage with a medley of his greatest hits while we took a break.

I thought that the choices of Bette Midler and Elton John impersonators were particularly inspired because they are both over-the-top personalities and you can’t help but have a good time and smile in the face of  such flamboyance. I think Lady Gaga, Tina Turner, Prince, Kathy Griffin and other larger-than-life entertainers would all be great choices too.

Of course there are brides have been hip to this for decades. Just think of the many marriages in Vegas that have been officiated by Elvis. But you don’t have to be in Vegas to get married by the likes of Cher or Joan Rivers. There’s a company based out of NYC called Bubby Gram that has impersonators that are registered Wedding Officiants. So now if you live in the greater New York City region, you can have Joe Pesci seal the deal. What could be more romantic?!

I perform at a lot of fundraisers. Many of them are well staffed, but some are not. Today’s blog post explores ways to get volunteers to help with your organizational tasks.

1. Begin with the obvious, ask your friends and family. If you are a professional Event Planner, you may want to skip this step as you don’t want to mix business with friends and family.

2. You might be surprised that other professionals that are in the Events Planning field will be happy to help. It’s a great networking opportunity for them, and many times, that’s enough.

3. Advertise for help with your local colleges and universities. Many times students will be looking experience and networking, and use volunteering as a stepping tone. Many students majoring in event planning and/or tourism are required to have volunteer hours as part of their study.

4. Ask local community groups. Civic-minded groups like the Elks, the Lions, Kiwanis Club or the Rotary Club are many times happy to help, especially if your cause is aligned with their community service goals.

5. Approach the churches in your locality. Many of them will have volunteer groups that would be happy to help with a righteous cause.

6. Offer incentives, such as giveaways, free entrance, free food and drink, etc.

7. If you event has corporate sponsorship, ask the corporations to help you get volunteers. This gives their employees an opportunity to socialize with each other outside of work, as well as network and impress the boss in a non-work environment.

Many of these ideas will work for any type of event, including corporate events, conventions, fairs and festivals. People will volunteer for many reasons including networking opportunities, experience, ideology, community or just because they want to be a part of something fun. Of course your volunteers aren’t exactly free labor, because you will probably have to feed them, and give them free stuff.

It’s also important to take care of your volunteers, so that they feel appreciated and are willing to come back and help out for future events. As a professional planner, there are few things more valuable than a trained and enthusiastic volunteer corps.

You are planning an event or putting together a party, and you have a speaker or an entertainer planned, but everyone seems to want to sit in the back of the room. Here are some ideas to encourage your guests to sit closer to the front:

1. If it’s theater seating, you can rope off the back rows until the front fills up.

2. If it’s banquet seating, put reserved signs on the tables towards the back of the room until the forward tables are full.

3. Close the back doors so that your guests have to enter towards the front of the room.

4. Put gifts/incentives for the attendees on the seats in the front.

5. Have greeters escort people to their chairs. You can even use a senior person or a featured speaker or entertainer to do this for more impact.

6. Set up less chairs than you will need, and once they fill up, have the rest of the chairs ready to be set up immediately.

7. Have an usher greet everyone by saying, “We have a full room today, please fill in the seats at the front.”

8. In the case of an informational presentation, such as a corporate event or a convention, put power strips for laptop and cell phone charging in the front rows.

9. Make a game of it. Hide the speaker podium behind a screen in what appears to be the “back” of the room. Once everyone is seated, bring the podium out and tell everyone to turn their chairs around so that now the back has become the front. The gasps will be heard for miles, but it will create excitement and energy, which your speaker or entertainment can build upon from the very beginning of their presentation.

10. If you’re having entertainment for your event, have the entertainer start their show by moving people towards the front. I’ve personally done that from behind my piano, sometimes using a flashlight to direct attention to the folks in the back. If the entertainer is good, it can be pretty painless.

11. Make it fun! Hire a fake paparazzi corp that will photograph only those in the seats you want to fill; or, hire impersonators to interact with guests in the front of the room; or, put signs on some of the rows, “For Diva’s Only”, “Pretty People Only”, or something else that is fun and interactive.

12. Tie helium balloons to the chairs on the back rows. People will get worried that they will have to do something with the balloons, and will gravitate towards the chairs without the balloons, the ones up front!