With the official start of summer just behind us, most of us have our minds on outdoors, sunshine oriented things when it comes to our leisure time and social lives. Whether it’s barbecues and beach parties, your summer holiday, festival season, or your company summer event, probably the last thing on your mind right now is Christmas and its surrounding party season! However, if you are a London based company, you may well have found from past experiences that leaving booking your party until too close to Christmas can result in a poor choice of venues, a date when nobody wants to go, or worst of all, those sad company Christmas parties that end up having to be in January when everyone is on a diet and has given up drinking!
But just when is too close to Christmas to have the pick of dates and venues? Sites like venuesearchlondon.com have venues you can book for Christmas parties well in advance, so how soon should you start looking?
September Used to Be the Best Time…
Until a few years ago, the ideal time to book a Christmas party in central London and start organising everything was in September. By September, summer is effectively over – at least in our minds, even if the weather is still good – and planning winter events seems less strange than it does before or during the summer holiday season. It is also far enough from Christmas that you would think only the best prepared companies would be fighting for the most convenient dates (such as the Thursday before Christmas) and the most sought after venues. This used to be the case, and company Christmas party organisers usually felt quite comfortable if they started making plans there at the start of the autumn.
…But Now It Is July
As with anything, as more and more people catch on to doing something early, you become forced to do it even earlier to get the same advantages you used to get. September has become almost the accepted Christmas party organising time in London, and that means there is as much of a rush to pick up the best venues then as there used to be in November. Now, if you want the best choice, you need to get in before this now accepted party planning period, so what is the answer? Do it in July!
Not as Crazy as It Seems
You may think your staff will all roll their eyes at you if you start polling them now on where they want to go for the Christmas do and what dates they are free, but in actual fact, the earlier it is out of the way, the less stressful it will be, and all you will need to focus on in the run up to the event is the more fun parts of organising it, like picking menus.
It is worth taking the time to force yourself to think about the cold December evenings that lie on the other end of this summer now, to get the best Christmas party for your team that you can!
