The total budget for an event can vary enormously, but how you divide it tells a story about what you prioritized. Here’s how we divided ours, how that changed along the way, and how I kept track of it all.
Where it went:
- AV: 28%. Sound, video, everything needed for the talks, staffing (setup labor, onsite roles), and DJ and sitar equipment to fulfill their riders.
- Creative and exhibits: 26%. Hardwalls, rental furniture, signage, photo prints, florals, and gifting.
- Food and beverage: 24%. Twelve hours of food, drinks, and service.
- Venue: 15%. The rental and the additional costs required to operate there.
- Event expenses: 7%. Photography, supplies, and shipping.
- Registration: Under 1%. Badges and stickers.
We finished at approximately 93% of our budget, without needing to use our contingency.
How I built it
I started with the total budget and worked backward, allocating a percentage to each category based on experience from past events. They weren’t exact numbers. They were educated guesses about what an event like this would need.
Here’s how that first plan compared to where the money actually went:
| Category | First Plan | Actual |
| Creative & Exhibits | 32% | 26% |
| Food & Beverage | 31% | 24% |
| AV | 22% | 28% |
| Venue | 7% | 15% |
| Event Expenses | 7% | 7% |
| Registration | 1% | Under 1% |
The total held, but the money moved. Venue and AV needed more than I expected, and food and creative needed less. That’s normal, the first allocation isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s a starting point that gives every category a ceiling, so when one runs over, you know exactly where to pull from.
AV was our largest expense.
A twelve-hour event with talks, live music, video, and a DJ requires a lot of technical support. It’s also one of the easiest categories to underestimate if you’re planning an event for the first time. Given the length of the event, onsite labor was the largest cost within the AV budget.
The venue cost roughly twice my initial estimate.
Not because the rental fee changed, but because of everything around it: the required kitchen rental, reserved parking for vendor load-in, security, an additional day of AV technicians, and overtime during load-in. To be fair, the bar also landed in this bucket, since we were required to use the venue’s bar service.
The lesson? A venue’s rental fee is not the cost of operating an event in that venue.
Food came in well below my original estimate.
I shared the story of the $100k catering proposal in this post. Getting specific about what we actually needed food to accomplish helped us spend more intentionally.
Where we saved
Some savings came from generous people. Others came from small, practical decisions.
- Our coffee and tea partners donated their time and product.
- Guests brought wine to share, contributing to the evening’s selection.
- The venue extended a discount, both because we were a returning client and because of the nature of the event.
- We ordered prints of Om’s photography and framed them ourselves using simple Amazon frames.
- We returned what we didn’t use.
That last one might sound insignificant, but we tracked every return in its own spreadsheet tab, right down to the pen rests.
How I track a budget
My event budgets have three columns that matter: estimate, re-estimate, post-event actuals. The estimate is your starting assumption. The re-estimate reflects what you’ve learned once proposals and quotes arrive. The actuals are what you really spent. Watching the differences between those three numbers helps you identify problems while there’s still time to do something about them.
Alongside the budget, I keep three trackers:
- Spend tracker: Every payment, vendor, category, who paid, and whether the contract and receipt are filed.
- Purchase list: Every item ordered, who ordered it, tracking information, and whether it arrived.
- Returns list: Everything going back, including whether the refund has been received.
It’s not glamorous, but having everything accounted for makes the difference between thinking you’re on budget and knowing you are.
Steal my event budget template
I’ve put together a blank version of the budget and trackers so you can use the same structure for your own event.
Post 19 of 60 · Making OmFest
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