What this is

A single, paid engagement with somebody who has planned events at the top of the market for more than twenty years. You buy her judgement, once, on the thing you are planning.

It is not a retainer, not a percentage of your budget, and not a full planner attached to you for a year. It is the conversation that most people planning something significant actually need and cannot easily buy: an experienced person looking at what you are doing, telling you what will work, what will not, what you have forgotten, and who to talk to.

Most of what is sold as event planning is either a full-service retainer costing many thousands, or a checklist written by somebody who has never run a room. There is very little in between, which is the gap this fills.

What it is not

Being straight about this matters more than selling it.

It is not on-the-day coordination. That is a different service and it comes with our catering — see event planning and coordination.

It is not a way of selling you catering. You are buying advice. If the right answer for your event is a different caterer, a different venue or a different month, that is what you will be told.

It is not a template. There is no downloadable pack and no spreadsheet with your name typed into it.

The experience behind it

Arabella Reeve began her career in private households, cooking for the late Queen and for royal families from overseas, and went on to run large private estates.

For more than two decades since, she has planned and run events for royal households, Middle Eastern families and private clients for whom the event simply has to work. That is a particular discipline: very high expectations, very little tolerance for error, guests who notice everything, and an absolute requirement that nothing appears anywhere afterwards.

She is not a wedding blogger who has scaled into planning. The experience is the other way round — it starts in the household, at the point where standards are set rather than described.

Discretion

Taken as read rather than offered as a feature.

We do not name clients, we do not publish photographs of private events, and we do not discuss one client with another. We are glad to sign a non-disclosure agreement before any detail is shared, and for a good many of the events behind this experience, that is precisely why they can never be listed here.

If you would rather this conversation did not appear in an email trail, say so and it will not.

Who it is for

Anyone planning something that genuinely matters and who wants a senior opinion once, rather than a supplier attached to them for a year.

• A significant private celebration — a milestone birthday, an anniversary, a family occasion at home or abroad
• A wedding where you are doing most of it yourself but want an experienced eye over the plan
• A public-facing or high-profile event where discretion and judgement matter as much as the arrangements
• A first event of its kind — a company doing something it has never done before
• Something already partly planned that you suspect is not quite right, and you want telling honestly

It suits people who are perfectly capable of running their own event and would simply rather not learn every lesson the expensive way.

Not only weddings

Weddings are the obvious case and they are not the main one.

Every event can be daunting, whatever its size, and the questions are the same: what order do things happen in, what have I not thought of, who is good, and what is going to go wrong. A sixtieth birthday, a company anniversary, a christening, a shoot weekend, a memorial — the discipline does not change.

Some people are entirely unfazed at the prospect of organising an event from start to finish. Others would rather not, and neither is the wrong answer.

How it works

It begins with a conversation about what you are planning, at no cost and with nothing to sign. From that we can tell you honestly whether this is worth buying — sometimes the answer is that you do not need it.

If it is, the engagement is scoped to your event: what you want looked at, how much of it, and by when. It is priced for that rather than from a menu, because a first family christening and a two-hundred-guest occasion abroad are not the same piece of work.

Availability is genuinely limited. Arabella takes a small number of these alongside her other commitments, which is why they are not sold as a package. If the timing does not work we will say so rather than stretch.

To start

Tell us roughly what you are planning, when it is, and what is worrying you about it. That last one is usually the most useful sentence in the email.

Ring if you would rather talk than write — and if the matter is sensitive, say so and we will keep it off email entirely.

Related: event planning and coordination for the on-the-day service that comes with catering, and our Little Black Book for the suppliers we rate.