have you considered drop downs ?
if your goal is to reduce clicks then providing three drop downs would be a good solution.
Assuming a wide range of possible input dates, an assumption based on the assertion that you don't want users to click lots on a date picker, perhaps looking at how sites handle dates of birth would be a good idea. Dates of birth range hugely and are usually handled with three drop downs, as Facebook demonstrate on their anonymous facing home page: https://www.facebook.com/r.php?locale=en_GB
Looking at events however, you may find a date picker is the best solution if the events are all within a month or two of today's date, clicks would be reduced as date pickers usually work on a month by month basis.
Another thing you can do with an event entry system is provide robust repetition logic for allowing sequences of events to be entered.
EDIT ...
A third alternative would be simple text fields, supported by robust client side validation. With tabs for fields you could remove clicks altogether. The validation is tricky when you consider how varied date formatting is, but I expect an open source java script product will cover this, or at least give you a good head start
This would remove a lot of the cognitive load of large drop downs or date picker calendars
If you do decide on date pickers, another thing you can also consider is to allow date ranges to be picked in one field, as this article demonstrates:
http://uxmovement.com/forms/how-travel-websites-can-make-their-calendars-faster/