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Every event that runs smoothly looks effortless from the outside. Guests arrive, coffee is hot, the room is set the way it was supposed to be, and nobody has to go hunting for the box of name badges that shipped two weeks ago.
That ease isn't luck. It's the result of a conversation that happened well before anyone walked through the door.
At LondonHouse Chicago, we run the same checklist with every planner we work with. It isn't paperwork for the sake of paperwork. Each question exists because, at some point, not asking it created a problem. Here's the full list, and more importantly, why each one earns its place.
We need a name, a cell number, and ideally a backup. Not the person who signed the contract, but the person who will be standing in the foyer at 7:00 a.m. when a decision needs to be made in ninety seconds.
When something shifts on event day, the difference between a smooth recovery and a visible scramble is usually just knowing who to call.
A registration table changes the shape of your pre-function space. It affects where we place coffee, how guests flow into the room, and whether we need to adjust the setup on either side of it.
Worth deciding early: staffed or self-serve, one table or two, and whether you want signage, power, or wifi at that station.
Breakfast, breaks, lunch, dinner, beverage stations, all of it. Menus drive kitchen timing, staffing levels, and service style, and some items require longer lead times than others.
Locking menus early also gives you room to be creative rather than picking quickly at the last minute.
Give us your best estimate, then tell us how confident you are in it. A firm 80 and a soft 80 that might become 120 are two very different events to plan for.
We'd rather build in flexibility from the start than find it under pressure later.
Start and end times for every session, every scheduled break, and every meal. This is the spine of the entire event on our side.
Our teams reverse-engineer everything from your agenda: when the kitchen fires food, when banquet staff refresh the room, when coffee gets replenished. A break that moves by fifteen minutes is a small change for you and a significant one for us, so the earlier we have it, the better we can protect it.
Allergies are a safety issue, and we treat them that way. Preferences and restrictions such as vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, halal, are a hospitality issue, and we treat those seriously too.
Nobody should have to explain their dietary needs to a server in front of a table of colleagues. If we know in advance, we can plate something for them and hand it over without a word.
Rounds, crescent rounds, classroom, theater, U-shape, hollow square, conference. Each one seats a different number of people in the same footprint and creates a different dynamic in the room.
If you tell us what you want the room to do (heavy note-taking, open discussion, presentation-focused), we can recommend a setup rather than just executing one.
This is the question that quietly saves the most events. Boxes arrive at hotels constantly. If a shipment is labeled with a company name our team doesn't recognize, or a person who isn't listed anywhere on the booking, it can sit in receiving while you're upstairs wondering where your materials went.
Tell us the sender, the recipient name, the expected arrival window, and roughly how many boxes. Also worth confirming: storage fees, delivery timing to your space, and the return shipping plan.
This one is about the guest experience at the very first and very last moment of your event. A guest who expects hosted parking and gets handed a bill has a slightly worse day, and it's the last thing they experience before they leave.
Decide early whether you're hosting, offering a discounted rate, or leaving it to attendees, then communicate it clearly in your pre-event materials.
Florals, branded signage, step-and-repeats, AV brought in from outside, a band, a DJ, a photographer. Anything arriving from a third party needs load-in timing, access instructions, and space allocated.
It also affects the room setup. A five-piece band and a dance floor take square footage that would otherwise be seats.
Give us names and, if you can, arrival times. It lets us recognize people by name at check-in, get a welcome amenity to the right room, and make sure your keynote speaker isn't waiting in line behind a tour group.
It's a small thing that reflects directly on you as the host.
Shuttles affect our arrivals and departures curb, our bell staff, and our front drive timing. If forty people are leaving at once, we'd like to know before they're standing in the lobby.
Send the schedule, the vendor, and the pickup location.
In Chicago, from October through April, the answer is almost always yes, and it needs staffing and space. Luggage storage matters most on departure day, when guests check out in the morning but stay through an afternoon session.
Without a plan, you get suitcases lining the back wall of your general session.
The catch-all, and often the most useful question on the list. A surprise recognition moment. An attendee who uses a mobility device. A tight window between your session end and airport departures.
Context helps us anticipate instead of react.
You're welcome to take this checklist and run it against any event you're planning, at this hotel or any other. Good venues will have answers to all fourteen. Great ones will have asked you first.
If you're planning something in Chicago and want to walk through it together, our team is happy to help.