As a social networking site for the purpose of event planning, the following connections are possible: user-to-user, user-to-vendor and vendor-to-vendor. A user must be the one to initiate a user-to-vendor connection, except in the case where a vendor is replying to a quote request. Once a connection is established, two people can communicate with one another using EEP’s instant chat feature. When a vendor replies to a user’s quote request, a user-to-vendor connection is automatically established. A connection can be ended at any time by either a user or a vendor.