How to Plan a Company Christmas Party: A Checklist

Most Decembers I am at a different company Christmas party almost every night, somewhere between Cheltenham and London. I am there as the entertainment, performing close-up magic and mind reading among the guests, but I cannot help noticing how the events themselves are run. In a previous life I was an international marketing director, and organising corporate events was part of the job, so I see the planning behind the party as well as the party itself. The good ones are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones where somebody made a handful of sensible decisions early and wrote them down. This is the checklist I would use if I were planning one this year, in the order I would actually work through it.

Start with the budget and the headcount

Everything else flows from two numbers: how much you can spend in total, and how many people are coming. Agree both before you look at a single venue website, because without them you cannot judge any quote you receive.

A few things I learnt the hard way when I was the one holding the budget:

• Work out a per-head figure, not just a total. Divide the budget by a realistic headcount and you can instantly tell whether a venue or caterer is in your range.
• List what the budget must cover now, not later. Venue, food, drinks, entertainment, transport, decorations, any overnight rooms. Parties that overspend usually forgot a category rather than underestimated a cost.
• Be honest about attendance. Ask for a genuine yes or no early on. A party priced for eighty that welcomes fifty-five feels flat and wastes money.
• Decide the drinks policy up front. A bar tab to a set limit, drinks tokens, or wine on the tables with a paid bar afterwards all work fine. Announcing the policy on the night does not.

One more decision to make deliberately rather than by default: whether partners are invited. It roughly doubles your catering numbers and changes the feel of the room, in a good way for some companies and not for others.

Lock the date early, because the best things go first

If you take one thing from this article, take this. The date is the scarce resource. Thursdays and Fridays in the first half of December disappear first, for venues, caterers and entertainers alike. My own December diary is usually spoken for well before the clocks change, and I hear the same from every function room I work in.

Here is a realistic timeline:

• September: agree the budget and headcount, shortlist two or three dates, and check them against your industry calendar so you are not clashing with anything your team must attend.
• Early October: confirm the venue and book the entertainment. These are the two things you cannot conjure up late.
• November: finalise menus, collect dietary requirements, and send the proper invitation with the date, dress code and drinks arrangement.
• First week of December: give final numbers to the venue and write the run sheet for the night.

If you are reading this later than that, do not panic. Midweek dates in early December are often still available and noticeably cheaper, and a January party is an underrated option: better availability, better prices, and it lands in a month when everyone could use a lift.

Choose the venue and the format, then sort food and drink

The format decision matters more than the venue’s chandeliers. Broadly you are choosing between a seated dinner, a standing reception with substantial food, or a hybrid where guests sit for a main course and mingle before and after. Seated dinners suit speeches and awards. Standing receptions suit mixing between departments. The hybrid gives you both, and in my experience it is where the best evenings happen, because people get a proper meal and still end up talking to colleagues they do not sit near all year.

When you view venues, look past the decorations and check the practical things:

• How guests will get home. If taxis are scarce, tell people early so they can plan.
• Whether you have the room to yourselves or share the night with other parties.
• Noise and layout. One long thin room kills conversation; a room slightly too small beats a room far too big.
• Accessibility for every guest on your list.
• The finish time the venue actually enforces, not the one on the brochure.

Food and drink

Collect dietary requirements with the RSVP, not the week before, and pass them to the venue in writing. Choose menus that hold up when service runs late, because it sometimes will. And whatever drinks policy you settled on in step one, brief the bar staff on it before doors open.

Give the evening a shape

This is the part I see go wrong most often, and it is the cheapest thing to fix. A party is not one event, it is a sequence: arrival, drinks, food, speeches, and the long stretch afterwards. Each join between those sections is a point where the energy either carries or drops.

The arrival period is the most awkward half hour of the night. People trickle in, cluster with their own team, and check their phones. This is exactly where mingling entertainment earns its keep. I spend that window moving between groups with close-up magic and mind reading, which gives strangers from different departments something to talk about besides work. No stage, no screens, no asking anyone to sit down and face the front. The same applies between courses and in the lull after speeches, when a seated room needs something to happen at the tables.

A shape that works, if you want a starting point: drinks and mingling entertainment on arrival, guests seated about forty-five minutes in, any speeches kept short and delivered before the main course rather than after dessert (people listen better when they are hungry than when they are three drinks deep), entertainment continuing between courses, then music or dancing to close. As a PMCA accredited emcee I often help clients tighten this running order, because the difference between a speech at 8.15 and the same speech at 10.30 is enormous.

Whoever you book, check their credentials and their reviews, and make sure their material suits your crowd. I am a Full Member of The Magic Circle, Cotswolds Magician of the Year 2026, and I perform for adult audiences only, which is precisely what a room full of colleagues is.

The final month: comms, dietary needs and the run sheet

The last stretch is administration, and a single page solves most of it. In the final week, write a run sheet and share it with the venue, the entertainment and one nominated colleague who will be your deputy on the night.

Your run sheet should cover:

• Timings for arrival, food service, speeches, entertainment and last orders.
• Final guest numbers and the dietary list, matched to the seating plan if you have one.
• Supplier arrival times and where each of them loads in.
• One named contact with a mobile number, and who takes over if that person is dragged into a conversation, which they will be.
• Taxi numbers or transport details, printed or shared in advance.

Then, on the night, your only real job is to stop solving problems by about nine o’clock and enjoy the party you built.

If your date is in December, have a look at my Christmas party packages & prices, which start from £550, and if you are planning something for another time of year, my corporate event entertainment page covers how I work at dinners, award nights and receptions. I am based near Cheltenham and perform across Gloucestershire, Bristol, Birmingham, Oxford, Swindon, London, Worcester, Cardiff and nationwide. Check your date with me early, because December really does go first. Call 0333 3355 087 or get in touch through the site and I will tell you straight away if I am free.