Manage your event with AI: how to plan with an assistant and stay in charge

What an assistant is good at

An AI assistant that is connected to your planning tool does more than write text. It can read your event, change it and report back, so the dull parts of planning become a sentence in a chat: "add these forty names", "move the dinner to 7.30 pm", "which payments are due in May?". It is quick with lists, careful with formats once you say what you want, and tireless with the kind of edits that take an evening by hand.

It is not good at what only you know. It does not know that two of your cousins should not share a table, that the terrace of the venue closes at ten, or that "the Millers" means four people and not two. Where you leave a gap, it guesses, and a guess in a guest list or a budget is a mistake you find later. This guide gives the assistant the work it does well and keeps the decisions with you.

Connect it once, then set the ground rules

An assistant reaches your event through a connector: you add the address of your planning tool's server in the assistant's settings, sign in and allow access. From then on it acts with your account, on every event you have, so treat the connection like a key you hand to a helper. If you plan in EventAssets, the page on its MCP server shows how to connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other assistants, and the support article lists what an assistant can and cannot do there.

Before the first real task, tell the assistant how you want to work. One message at the start of a chat is enough:

• Ask before you delete: name what would go and wait for a yes.
• Show the plan first: for anything that touches more than a few entries, list the changes before making them.
• Report back: after each change, say what changed, with the numbers.
• Never guess: when a name, a date or an amount is unclear, ask.

Most assistants keep instructions like these for the whole chat, and many let you save them for every chat.

Prompts that work

A good prompt for event planning reads like a note to a capable helper who has never met your family. It names the event, says what to do and gives every fact the task needs.

• Name the event: "in the wedding on 12 September" saves a wrong guess when you plan more than one.
• Give times with their place: "7.30 pm, Lisbon time" leaves no doubt about the time zone.
• One job per message: adding guests and seating them are two tasks; mixed together, their mistakes are harder to see.
• Paste the source: a list copied from a spreadsheet or a message beats a description of it.
• Say what done looks like: "every guest in a party, nobody left over" gives the assistant a check of its own.

A weak prompt is "sort out the guests". A strong one is "Add the 32 guests below to the summer party. Each line is one party; the names after the first are companions. Do not add anyone twice, and tell me how many guests there are when you are done."

Check what the assistant did

Many planning tools have no drafts: a change is live on the page the moment it is made. So the check comes after the change, and it can be short.

• Ask for a summary: "List what you changed, with counts." Compare the counts with your own.
• Open the page as a guest would: in a private window or on your phone, read the event page from top to bottom. A wrong date, a missing section or an odd order shows at once.
• Spot-check three entries: pick three guests or budget items at random and look at them in the tool itself.
• Watch the time zone: a time that is off by exactly one or two hours is almost always a time zone mistake.

Keep the guest list clean

The guest list is where an assistant saves the most time and where its errors cost the most, because every count, every RSVP and every table depends on it.

Choose one way to write names and say it: first name and surname, as guests would recognise themselves on a place card. Group people the way they reply: a couple, a family or a guest with a companion is one party. After each import, ask the assistant to list the names that appear twice, the parties of one that should have companions, and the names it was unsure about. Children are guests too: decide whether they count, and tell the assistant.

Do not let it invent anyone. "Plus one" is not a name: ask the guest, or leave the companion for later. And keep what you paste lean. Names and parties are what the list needs, not addresses, phone numbers or notes on who is difficult.

RSVP questions guests will answer

An assistant is good at drafting questions and poor at knowing when to stop. Ask it for a proposal, then cut. Three or four questions are plenty for most events, and each one should change something you will do.

• Single choice for decisions: the main course, the shuttle or not.
• Multiple choice for answers that combine: the days a guest will attend.
• Number for counts: how many high chairs.
• Text for what cannot be listed: dietary needs, a song request.

Settle the reply deadline at the same time, two to four weeks before the caterer needs final numbers. Then read the questions as a guest would, on a phone, before anyone is invited to answer them.

Seating with an assistant

Give the assistant the constraints and let it propose, not decide. Tell it the tables and their sizes, who must sit together, who must not, and which tables stand near the front. Ask it to seat whole parties and to report the tables that are short of guests or over full.

Then look at the chart yourself. A seating plan is about people, and the last word on who sits beside your grandmother is yours. When a guest declines late, ask the assistant which table now has a free seat and who could move there.

Budget without surprises

Budgets suit assistants well: they are lists of names, amounts and dates. Paste the quotes you have and ask for one budget per area, with an item for each cost, its planned amount and its due date. As payments go out, tell the assistant what was paid and when.

Then use it to ask questions: what is due in the next four weeks, which items are over plan, how much is left. It pays nobody; it records what you tell it, so the numbers are only as good as what you report.

Privacy, and a human in the loop

A guest list is personal data, and dietary needs can say something about a guest's health. What you type into a chat, and what the assistant reads from your event, goes to the assistant's provider and is handled under its terms. Read them, check whether your chats are used to train its models, and switch that off where you can. Share what the task needs and nothing more.

Keep one person in charge. The assistant prepares; you decide. An assistant that only manages your planning sends nothing to your guests, so what they receive is still yours to write and to send. When the planning is done, or when a helper's access should end, disconnect the assistant in your account.