Event Planning Questionnaire Template
The discovery questionnaire event planners send before the first call — occasion, date, headcount, budget band, venue status, and the vision in the client’s own words.
Before we design a single moment, we listen. Answer what you can — rough answers are welcome — and we'll arrive at our first conversation already prepared.
The first call between a planner and a client is either a discovery interview or a conversation, and it cannot be both. When the basics — occasion, date, headcount, budget, venue — arrive by questionnaire beforehand, the call starts at the interesting part: what the event should feel like. This template is that questionnaire, tuned by the questions planners actually ask and the order clients actually answer them in.
Why these fields. Name-and-role matters because "bride," "office manager," and "gala chair" are three different clients with three different approval chains, and knowing which one is typing changes the proposal you write. The occasion dropdown includes "something else entirely" because the most interesting commissions never fit the list. The date field says even a guess helps — the phrase that stops perfectionists from abandoning the form at question four — and the headcount is a bounded number because "around 150" is plannable while "not sure, lots?" is not. The budget bands do delicate work: ranges feel safer than naked numbers, the "still working it out" option keeps honest people honest, and the bands themselves map to genuinely different event architectures. Venue status is the timeline question in disguise — booked, shortlisted, and searching are three different project plans. The services multi-select scopes the engagement, and the vision field, required and open, captures the client's own words before any planner vocabulary shapes them; proposals that quote it back win engagements.
What we left out. Contract terms, deposits, and payment schedules — those belong in the proposal this form exists to enable, not the intake. Vendor-preference interrogations (too early to be useful, specific enough to be limiting). And date availability checking: the form gathers intent, and calendars get compared by humans in the conversation that follows.
Who uses this. Independent event planners and coordination studios, venues with in-house planning teams, caterers who expanded into full service, and corporate event agencies qualifying inbound enquiries.
Make it yours. Rename the services to your actual menu and link the form from your "start planning" button. Add a file upload block if you want mood boards up front — clients can attach inspiration images up to 10MB each, pinned to their response. Wire a webhook to your CRM so each questionnaire opens a lead automatically, and honor the two-business-day promise in the ending, because responsiveness is the first thing clients test. Partial capture earns its keep here too: a half-finished questionnaire with contact details is a warm lead, not a lost one.
Listen before you design. Every field exists to make the first conversation smarter — arrive knowing the shape, spend the hour on the soul.
Frequently asked questions
What if the client only has rough answers?
Rough is the point — bands and guesses are enough to scope a proposal, and the intro says so explicitly to stop perfectionists abandoning the form.
Can clients attach inspiration images or boards?
Add a file upload block in the editor — clients can attach images or PDFs up to 10MB each, and the files stay pinned to their response.
Can submissions land in our CRM automatically?
Yes — add a webhook and each completed questionnaire POSTs to your CRM or automation tool in real time, with a signature you can verify.
Is a half-finished questionnaire lost?
No — partial answers are captured as respondents type, so an interrupted client still shows up with contact details and whatever they completed. That is a lead, not a loss.
Does the form book the event date?
No — the date question captures intent only. Availability and contracts are confirmed in your proposal conversation, where they belong.