How to Write an Event Brief That Fills In Your Whole Plan

When you create an event on Plan My Do, the first thing you see is a box asking you to describe what you are planning. It is not a notes field. What you write there is read for facts and for intent, and the result is a filled-in event, a checklist built for that kind of event, a due date on every item, a suggested cost against each one, and a set of things your suppliers are scored against. A good paragraph does most of the form-filling for you. A bad one costs you nothing - anything not found is left blank for you to type - but it is worth knowing what a good one looks like.

Two passes over the same paragraph

Press Get started and your brief is read twice. The first pass hunts for hard facts - a number of guests, a pound sign, a town, a date - using fixed rules. It is not interpreting anything: it either finds the pattern or it does not, which is why the exact words matter more than you would expect. The second pass reads the rest for intent: which jobs you are planning to handle yourself, what you have said a venue or supplier must be, and anything you have mentioned that is not on the standard list for your kind of event.

The first pass runs on anything, however short. The second needs at least 25 words of real prose. "Wedding, 100 guests, £15,000, Truro, June 2027" is a perfectly good set of facts and there is nothing left in it to read - you will get the fields filled in and none of the rest of this page.

The facts it lifts straight out

Seven things are pulled out of the sentences you write and dropped into the form below. Every one of them stays editable, and every one of them does something further down the line.

Phrasings that work, and ones that quietly do not

This is the part worth skimming even if you read nothing else. The first pass is literal, and a near miss reads as nothing at all rather than as an approximation.

Say what you are doing yourself, item by item

This is the half most people leave out, and the half that changes the checklist most. Say what you intend to do with specific things and each one is set up that way when your checklist is built:

• "I'll make the cake myself" - the Cake item is marked as yours, with a DIY chip on it, and does not go looking for suppliers.
• "I want to book a proper photographer" - Photography is marked as needing a supplier, so it shows you matches.
• "we'll buy the decorations", "we're hiring the marquee", "we're borrowing a gazebo from my brother" - bought, hired and borrowed are all separate answers, and all three keep the item on your list without treating it as something to book.

A general steer works too - "we want to keep it simple and do most of it ourselves", or "honestly we would rather just book people" - and pre-selects the How hands-on do you want to be? question above the Build my checklist button. But the general steer is only a default. Anything you said about a specific item beats it, which is why "we are doing most of it ourselves, but I want a real photographer" gets you exactly what it sounds like. Judge each thing on its own and say so.

One thing it will not do is argue with a fact. Marquees, generators and toilets are hired, on every checklist, whatever your appetite - that is what they are, not a preference to be overridden.

Two kinds of extra, and they go to different places

Anything you mention beyond the standard checklist is sorted into one of two piles, and the distinction is genuinely useful to hold in your head while writing.

Things to arrange - a sound system for the speeches, a photo booth, your nan's trifle - come back as one-tap suggestions in a "From your brief" strip above the checklist's quick-add box. Tapping one fills in the name and leaves you to pick a category; nothing is added to your list without you.

Things that must be true - "the venue needs to be wheelchair accessible", "a few of the guests are gluten-free", "we are bringing the dog" - are not checklist items at all. They are matched against a fixed list of supplier and venue properties and ticked on the right checklist item, under Narrow your matches in that item's drawer, where they push suppliers who have them up your list. You can untick any of them.

• Accessibility and site: wheelchair accessible, parking, public transport access, toilets on site, power on site, indoor space, outdoor space, on-site accommodation.
• Food and drink: gluten-free menu, vegan menu, vegetarian menu, halal menu, kosher menu, allergen-aware catering, licensed bar, BYO alcohol.
• Who is coming: child-friendly, adults-only, pet-friendly, LGBTQ+ friendly, large groups, small and intimate groups.
• Style and extras: rustic, modern, traditional, luxury, eco-friendly, dance floor, live band, DJ, photo booth, fireworks, drone photography.

A brief that does all of it

Here is one that hits every part of the pipeline. It is four sentences and took about a minute to write:

What that produces, before you have typed anything into the form yourself:

1. Event type set to Milestone Adult Birthday, from "40th" - which is what decides the checklist you get. Age 40 filled in alongside it.
2. Guest count 35, budget £3,000, location Truro, date 12 October 2026, marked as fixed.
3. A checklist of venue, catering, cake, bar, decorations, entertainment and photography, each with a due date counted back from 12 October and a slice of the £3,000 against it.
4. The cake marked as yours to make; photography and catering marked as needing suppliers.
5. Wheelchair access ticked on the venue and a gluten-free menu ticked on the catering, so suppliers offering them rank higher.
6. "A sound system for the speeches" waiting as a one-tap suggestion above quick-add.

Note what is not in it: no adjectives about the vibe, no apology for not knowing things yet, and nothing said twice. "The venue needs to be wheelchair accessible" is in there once, as a property of the venue. Written as "we need wheelchair access" it would more likely land as a separate checklist row instead, which is not wrong so much as less useful.

Get it right before you press Create event

You can rewrite the brief and press Update as many times as you like on the create screen - it costs nothing and re-reads from scratch each time. It is worth one more pass before you commit, for one reason: your checklist is built once. After that, the individual items are yours to edit freely, but the one-off act of generating them from the brief does not happen twice.

Two things follow from that. Answer the hands-on question honestly on the checklist screen before pressing Build my checklist, because that is the only moment it can shape anything. And if you later rewrite the brief on the Details tab, the event keeps the plan it already has - the rewritten text is not re-read, and the suggestions from the original are cleared rather than regenerated from words you have replaced.

What it does not do

• It never invents a fact you did not give. A field you said nothing about is left empty, not filled with a plausible guess.
• Your brief is not sent to suppliers. What they see is the tidy version - event type, date, location, guest count, the specific thing you are asking them about, and whatever note you write on the enquiry itself.
• Nothing it decides is locked. Every field, every checklist item, every ticked property and the hands-on answer are all editable afterwards.
• It has no opinion on how good your plan is. It reads what you wrote; the judgement stays yours.

If you want to see the other end of the same machine, how Plan My Do matches suppliers to events sets out what each of these facts is actually worth when your matches are ranked. And if you are still working out what goes on the list at all, the things everyone forgets is a good companion to a first brief.

See how an example brief turns into a costed checklist before you write your own, and how it goes out to suppliers when you enquire.