Event planner makes her passion her profession

When guests walked into the Tiger Hotel for a launch party, they were greeted at a sign-in table in front of a large poster displaying the new organization’s logo, and food and drinks were lined up in the lobby.
Such details might have been taken for granted by the 75 or so people who attended the ceremony to launch the Community Foundation of Central Missouri on Nov. 17, but they were visible evidence of organizer Anne Churchill’s handiwork.
The high-powered event took place one month after Churchill launched her own company, AnnaBelle Events.
“It was originally going to be Anne Churchill Events,” Churchill said. But she decided on Annabelle because another Anne Churchill, Winston Churchill’s niece, is from nearby Fulton. “My girlfriends all called me Annabelle growing up.”
Churchill said she has been coordinating vacations and parties for a long time.
“When I travel with my girlfriends, I’m the one to plan the trip we’re taking,” Churchill said. “Event planning was always my dream. … I figured I might as well make it everything.”
Churchill was born in Chicago, but her family moved to Columbia when she was 2. She returned to Chicago after high school and got her first professional experience in event planning while attending DePaul University and working as an intern at Soldier Field, home of the Bears. She decided to return home and transferred to Columbia College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree with a double major in marketing and sports management.
She went to work for Inside Columbia magazine, where she produced the event calendar and planned events such as magazine launch parties, a festival, a fashion show and numerous cocktail parties.
Now with her own company, she offers to handle anything from corporate events to “everyday occasions” such as birthdays and anniversaries. For large events, her strategy is to complement the existing marketing department at companies.
“Every company out there has marketing or PR people,” Churchill said, “but they might not have the desire to plan events or the passion for picking out linens or picking out hors d’oeuvres. That’s really my passion.”
For now, Churchill works from an office in her home and is a one-person operation, though she hires people on the day of an event to help with “heavy lifting.”
The Community Foundation launch, her company’s first event, was actually an in-kind donation, provided because she is a member of the new organization’s board. She had about 300 invitations designed, printed, addressed and mailed. She picked the downtown venue, sent out press releases, answered questions about the event, made nametags and did whatever else needed to be done to pull off the event.
“We chose the Tiger because we wanted to make it so people could casually come in from work,” she said. “We didn’t want to make it out of their way.”
Roger Still, executive director of the Community Foundation of Central Missouri, praised Churchill near the end of the event.
“She has done an incredible job in putting this gig together,” he said. “This could not have happened without her help and support.”
Churchill also is a board member for the New Century Fund and was on the committee that organized the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center Gala.
“I grew up in Columbia and wanted to find a way to give back,” she said.
Her second client is one of Columbia’s largest employers, University Hospital. She’ll be working with the hospital staff on a golf tournament in June that will benefit the newly relocated Children’s Hospital.