If you find yourself in a situation where you need to plan an event and cannot enlist the help of a professional, certain things would be useful to consider in order to make your event successful. For example as Wikipedia points out budgeting, budgeting is a crucial aspect to look at. One cannot plan an event if one is not aware of how much money there is to spend.
Other components to pay attention to as highlighted by the article Billetto narrated strategizing, is that one needs to strategize.
One needs to think about what type of an event is it going to be, what possible options are for appropriate venues, what are the catering/menu options, how many people can the location accommodate, logistics and many others.
Therefore being organized is imperative from the get go. It will be helpful to get some sort of guidelines as to advise on where to start with the official planning. Also with the planning comes timing and having a backup plan if the original venue for instance is no longer available or something unforeseeable happens.
The short of it is that not everyone is creatively inclined. Hence it is better that; if enlisted to do an event, that one does the necessary research to obtain success.