A marketplace that brings party suppliers to you.

Events & Party Planning · Monsta App

The client.

An entrepreneur who'd been running her own businesses for years. She'd been sitting on this idea for a long time. She'd already done her legal groundwork and secured the brand.

She'd also been burned before. A previous developer had taken her money and delivered nothing. So she came in guarded, detailed, and very clear about what she expected.

The idea.

A two-sided marketplace for event planning. On one side, someone planning a party, a wedding, a birthday, a corporate event. On the other, local suppliers. Venues, caterers, DJs, cake makers, florists, entertainment, transport.

The planner fills in their event details, browses suppliers by category, and adds the ones they like to a quote list. Those suppliers get notified, review the brief, and quote back through the platform. No chasing people up. No waiting on callbacks. The suppliers come to you.

The business model was pay-per-lead for suppliers, with plans for tiered subscriptions and paid placement down the line. The client had identified clear gaps in the existing Australian events market and saw an opportunity to offer better value to both sides.

The challenge.

This was a three-sided platform. Planners, suppliers, and an admin panel to vet and approve supplier applications. Each side had its own flows, its own dashboard, and its own set of rules. That's effectively three apps in one.

The client also had a very ambitious vision. AI-powered features, additional event categories, advanced supplier tools, and several monetisation layers. Every session required discipline to keep the MVP lean. We had to keep separating what needed to be in version one from what could wait.

When the initial development quote came back higher than expected, we made the call to strip the MVP back further. We removed the in-app messaging and quoting system entirely, focusing version one purely on lead generation and supplier contact. The messaging layer would come later.

The process.

Monsta Apps get seven weeks instead of five. A project this size needs the extra time, and this one earned every day of it.

Week 1. Discovery and strategy

The first session was a full strategy and design kickoff. The client explained her vision in detail. We worked out how to explain the idea in one sentence, identified the target market (primarily women planning family events), agreed on the MVP approach (start in one city, get enough suppliers before going to consumers), and looked at what was already out there.

Week 2. User flows and competitor review

I ran a live Figma session walking through competitors and mapping out the complete user flows. We defined the planner signup, event creation, supplier browsing, and quote request flows. On the supplier side, we built out onboarding with business verification, service categories, party types, and service areas. We also designed the admin approval workflow.

Language mattered to this client. Terminology for listings, categories, and user labels was debated carefully. That kind of detail came up in every session.

Weeks 3 and 4. Wireframes and branding

We walked through over 80 wireframe screens across all three sides of the platform. Planner flows, supplier dashboard, admin panel. Every detail got debated. Supplier counters, quote line items, credit purchase screens, lead notification states, archive behaviour.

Branding landed on a warm, bold palette with accent colours mapped to different event types. The visual system gave the platform a festive but professional feel. We chose a typeface that felt approachable but not cheap, and refined the card-based UI with rounded corners and subtle shadows.

Weeks 5 and 6. Hi-fi design and scope revision

After the initial dev quote came in high, we worked together to strip the MVP back to its core. Lead generation and contact only. No in-app messaging, no payment processing. We revised the affected screens and confirmed the feature list with clear version labels (V1, V2, V3).

Week 7. Final polish and developer handoff

The final week was spent tightening up the prototype, confirming multi-business account management, adding AI-assisted profile descriptions for suppliers, and preparing the complete developer brief. Every screen was annotated and every future feature was clearly flagged.

The result.

Over 80 wireframe screens across three platforms. A full branding direction. Complete user flow documentation. A clickable Figma prototype. A developer-ready brief with the MVP scope clearly defined and future features flagged for later versions.

The client had been thinking about this for years and had been let down before. This time, she walked away with something real. Something she could show a developer, show investors, and start building from with confidence.

What made this project work.

• The client knew the events industry inside out and had done serious competitor research before we started.
• We were disciplined about MVP scope, even when it meant cutting features the client loved.
• When the dev quote came in high, we adapted quickly instead of trying to force the original scope.
• The client cared about the small things. That showed in the final product.

Related: App design for events and party planning · The difference between a feature and a solution · How the five-week process works