Big conference venues are great, but sometimes you need a more intimate space to connect with VIPs, speakers, or sponsors. While we love the myriad of “blank slate” venues available around town for big groups, most of them don’t offer the privacy that companies want for an exclusive pre-event reception or post-conference dinner. We’ve curated a list of our favorite restaurants, bars, and event spaces that offer just the right amount of privacy, exclusivity, and character.

When you’re hosting a corporate event, you need to find a way to justify the cost, but how? By measuring your ROI, baby! First, you need to consider what your stakeholders actually care about. This should happen at the beginning of your event planning so that you can bake it into your event strategy. Measuring something other than what your key stakeholders  are looking for will yield poor results all around.

Welcome to Part 2 of our series on Kennedy Events’ favorite venues in San Francisco! We love this city (and beyond) and we’re thrilled to share these gems with you. All of these venues have been vetted by our team, so we’re well acquainted with all the quirks and perks of each. We’re experts in planning corporate events, especially in San Francisco, and if you’ve been to any of these fabulous venues, let us know! We hope you love the places on this list as much as we do.

At Kennedy Events, we love great event design, but we don’t simply design an event to be beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful. There’s an intense amount of strategy that goes into every detail. If you’ve ever attended our events, you may not have noticed this—and that’s the telltale sign that we’ve done our job well.

At Kennedy Events, we love great event design, but we don’t simply design an event to be beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful. There’s an intense amount of strategy that goes into every detail. If you’ve ever attended our events, you may not have noticed this—and that’s the telltale sign that we’ve done our job well.

At Kennedy Events, we love great event design, but we don’t simply design an event to be beautiful just for the sake of being beautiful. There’s an intense amount of strategy that goes into every detail. If you’ve ever attended our events, you may not have noticed this—and that’s the telltale sign that we’ve done our job well.

Event signage may not be a sexy topic, but it’s one of the best ways to communicate key information with your attendees. We’re sharing use cases and various styles of signage in our latest blog post.

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When you’re planning a corporate event at a hotel, you need an agent on your side before signing the dotted line. We’re spilling everthing you should know, but probably don’t about hotel contracts.

When you’re hosting a corporate event and want to break the internet without breaking the bank, pick the right catering style. We’re showing you how to maximize your catering budget in our latest post.

Hiring the perfect team of event planners has been a thoughtful process at Kennedy Events, and we let Oceans 11 inspire our process.

Here at Kennedy Events, we know that even a million dollar event budget has limits. And when hosting an event, you’re faced with limitless options in every facet of the event. So one of our major roles in planning? Helping you make the most strategic use of your budget, no matter the size. =

Today, we’ve pulled together Spend and Splurge options for some of the most common elements of an event, like the food, decor, and entertainment.

How do you decide what you want areas to splurge on?

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Events are SO much fun (of course we think so!), but we’re proponents of making sure that you’re event is more than pretty. We’re in favor of making sure that the effects of your event are going to last longer than the effects of the open bar will. And that’s where goal setting comes in.

We’ve talked a lot about goal setting on our blog before, from how to achieve your goals strategically before, during, and after an event, but today we’re taking a slightly different approach.

It’s only February, but event prep season is coming up (we know, we’re just getting over the holidays too!). It may seem absurd to start planning now, but the year’s best events get planned months in advance, sometimes more than a year in advance.

And the very first step to planning your event (other than  your venue, of course!)?

Finding the perfect event planner.

Want to know the question we get asked most often?

What kind of event can I get for $XYZ,000?

It’s the million dollar question...literally.

But the truth is, we just don’t have a rinse and repeat and answer for that question. An event is so varied, so complex, that there is no set formula for what it might cost.

2017 has been a banner year for Kennedy Events. We’ve had one of our most exciting years in business yet, with the best clients an event planner could ask for, plus a new rebrand and website for ourselves

Sure, we talk about the how and why of events all the time here at Kennedy Events HQ. We love them!

But guess what? Not everybody is ready right.this.minute to host a live event...

Today’s post is #3 in a 3-part series all about helping you get the most out of your event planning work by setting meaningful and measurable goals....

Welcome to Post #2 in our 3-Part series that teaches you everything(ok, a lot!) we know about to set and measure goals for event success...

So, here’s the inside scoop. Some event planners are well suited to select the venue, recommend food and décor, and make things run smoothly. ..

Planning an event that isn’t just pretty and fun, but drives results to your company’s bottom line takes a lot of hard work from a dedicated group of people....