Develop an Event Schedule
Before you start looking at venues, caterers, auctioneers, or emcees, you should make your first cut at your event schedule. Doing this now gives you a roadmap to refer to when discussing your event with these people, and allows them to more easily advise you on changes you might want to make that will help the event go more smoothly.
 
Start by writing out all the things that will happen on event day, and assign an initial target time for each. Let’s assume you are holding a dinner auction on a Saturday night. You want to have a slideshow, two silent auction closings with a pianist playing in the background, a live auction, and a raffle drawing. Your initial schedule might look like the following:

8:00AM    Setup begins - Volunteers and truck with items arrive -
               Tables are in place and skirted
 
12:00PM  Computers arrive - Registration and checkout are setup -
               Lunch for volunteers is brought in
 
4:00        Setup is complete - Software is verified -
               Event volunteers arrive
 
5:00        Doors open - Silent auctions begin -
               Slideshow begins in dining area
 
5:30        Pianist begins - Emcee takes the mic in silent auction area
 
6:20        Pianist breaks for 10 minutes
 
6:30        Pianist starts second set
 
6:45        First silent auction section closes
 
7:15        Second silent auction section closes
 
7:20        Pianist finishes - Dinner seating begins -
               Salads and desserts pre-set
 
7:30        Slideshow ends - Announcements, introductions, etc. -
               2nd and 3rd place raffle winners are drawn and announced
 
8:00        Auctioneer and emcee take the stage - Live auction begins
 
8:30        Checkout opens
 
9:45        Live auction ends - 1st place raffle winner announced
 
10:00      Event ends
 
10:30      All guests checked out - Clean up begins

12:00AM  Must be out of venue

The above schedule gives 1 hour and 45 minutes for the live auction. Depending on how many items you have in your live auction, the size of your crowd, and other factors, your auctioneer might advise that you don’t need that much time, or that you need more. This schedule also assumes that the pianist will play two sets of 50 minutes each, with a 10 minute break in between them. You won’t really know this for sure until you find a pianist, and make an agreement with them.
 
The fact is, your final schedule might be quite a bit different from your first cut. At this point, this is just a roadmap to help you in your planning. Don’t try to make this your finished schedule.

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