Exercises: What a Planner Actually Does
Difficulty guide: ⭐ Foundational (5–10 min) · ⭐⭐ Intermediate (10–20 min) · ⭐⭐⭐ Challenging (20–40 min) · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced (40+ min)
Part A: Conceptual Understanding ⭐
A.1. Name the four activities that appear in every service tier. Explain why that fact matters to how you price the tiers relative to each other.
A.2. A colleague says: "I sell day-of coordination and it works fine — I've done thirty of them." Give the strongest version of their position, then explain what the chapter would say they are actually selling and absorbing.
A.3. Explain the difference between reducing scope and discounting. Why does the chapter treat one as professional and the other as amateur?
A.4. In your own words: what does "scope is a safety device" mean, and who is it protecting?
A.5. A scope document says "unlimited email support." Identify three specific problems with that phrase and rewrite it.
A.6. List the three ways a couple-built timeline is predictably wrong. For each, explain what makes it a systematic error rather than a random one.
A.7. Define, without looking back: scope creep, change order, point of contact, decision rights, à la carte services.
A.8. Why does the chapter insist the scope document be sent as a separate one-pager before the contract?
Part B: Applied Analysis ⭐⭐
B.1. Find the inclusions error. Here is a real-shaped inclusions list. Identify every unmeasurable term and rewrite the whole thing with counts.
"Comprehensive vendor management. Ongoing budget support. Design assistance as needed. Regular communication throughout the planning process. Full coordination on the wedding day. Assistance with any other details that arise."
B.2. Write the exclusions. For the corrected list from B.1, write eight exclusions. At least three must be things a client would plausibly assume were included.
B.3. Score four engagements. Using the §2.8 matrix, score and assign a tier to each:
- (a) 60 guests, hotel ballroom, all-inclusive, 4 months out, couple has booked everything but flowers, $28,000, both partners work from home and are enjoying planning.
- (b) 220 guests, private estate, 16 months out, nothing booked, $150,000, two demanding careers, a Hindu ceremony and a Western reception on consecutive days, three sets of parents contributing.
- (c) 110 guests, winery with a preferred vendor list, 7 months out, venue and caterer booked, $55,000, one partner is very involved and the other is not, one opinionated mother.
- (d) 40 guests, restaurant buyout, 10 weeks out, everything booked, $18,000, couple has planned two events before.
For each, also state one thing you would want to know that the description does not tell you.
B.4. Rebuild the hours. Take the 194-hour table in §2.2 and rebuild it for a partial planning engagement where the client has already booked venue, caterer, and photographer, and there are 12 months to go. Show your removals and any additions. Justify anything you cut by more than half.
B.5. Price the tiers coherently. You have decided full-service is $5,200. Using the hour counts in §2.1, price partial and month-of so that all three are internally consistent — that is, so a client comparing them sees a rational relationship. Then explain why pure hours-based pricing produces a wrong answer for month-of, and adjust.
B.6. The creep table. Reproduce the §2.5 creep table for a different client archetype: a corporate client running an annual sales conference. What do the nine requests look like there? What is the total?
B.7. Diagnose the tent. In the 🚨 block in §2.3, four documents contained the information needed to catch the problem. Name them, and describe the routine that would have surfaced the conflict at month two rather than day eleven.
Part C: Real-World Application ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐
C.1. Write your scope of service. ⭐⭐⭐ One page, five parts, for a service you would genuinely sell in your market. Real counts throughout. This is the chapter's primary deliverable. Keep it — you will revise it in Chapters 8, 37, and 38.
C.2. Collect three real scopes. ⭐⭐ Find three planners' published service descriptions (websites, brochures, published packages). For each: mark every unmeasurable term, note what exclusions are stated, and note what is conspicuously absent. What does the pattern tell you about the standard of the field?
C.3. Rehearse the boundary. ⭐ Write your two-sentence scope-creep response. Say it aloud twenty times until it sounds like speech. Then have someone role-play four escalating requests at you and respond in under five seconds each. Note where you flinched.
C.4. Interview about exclusions. ⭐⭐⭐ Ask a working planner: "What's the one thing you wish you'd excluded from your scope?" Most will answer instantly. Ask two follow-ups: what did it cost them, and what do they do now. Write it up in 300 words and add them to your vendor file.
C.5. Price your à la carte menu. ⭐⭐ Build and price at least five à la carte offerings for your market, with hour estimates for each. Compute the effective hourly rate for each and rank them. Which is your best product on a per-hour basis? Does that surprise you?
C.6. Audit a timeline. ⭐⭐⭐ Find a real wedding timeline — published templates, a friend's, a planner's sample. Audit it against the three predictable failures in §2.3. Report what you found. If it passes all three, say who built it and what else they got right.
Part D: Synthesis and Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐
D.1. Cross-chapter integration. Chapter 1 established the Saturday ceiling (10–18 events/year). Chapter 2 established the hour costs by tier. Combine them: design an annual service mix — how many of each tier, plus à la carte — that produces the best income for a solo planner. State your assumptions and show the arithmetic. What is the binding constraint in your answer, and is it the same one as in Chapter 1?
D.2. Critique the threshold concept. "Scope is a safety device" is presented as protective of both parties. Construct the strongest case that rigid scope actively harms the client relationship in a business built on trust and emotional service — and note that the chapter itself concedes one of these requests was genuinely inside scope. Then respond to your own case. Where exactly is the line between a professional boundary and a defensive one?
D.3. The honest-decline problem. A couple with a raw-site wedding, nine unbooked vendors, and $1,800 to spend asks you for month-of coordination. Chapter 2 says one honest option is to sell it while telling them what will be uncovered. Write that conversation. Then answer: is that genuinely honest, or is it a way of taking money for a service you know is inadequate?
D.4. Transfer. Apply the five-part scope structure to a service business you know that is not events — a consultant, a contractor, a freelance designer, a therapist. Which of the five parts does that industry do well? Which does it do badly? What does the comparison suggest about why event planning gets scope wrong so consistently?
D.5. Design the missing tier. The four tiers are an industry convention, not a law. Design a fifth product that does not currently exist in the standard menu, specify its scope in the five-part structure, price it, and identify which client it serves that the existing four serve badly.
Part M: Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐
These require choosing the right framework, not applying a given one.
M.1. (Ch.1 + Ch.2) A client asks you to recommend a florist. You have three good ones. One pays a 12% referral fee. Walk through what you do and say — and identify which chapter's framework governs the decision.
M.2. (Ch.1) A photographer quotes $1,600 for eight hours. Using the Chapter 1 cost-reconstruction habit, list four things this business model has likely required them to leave out. Then say what you would ask them.
M.3. (Ch.2) A client emails at 11:40 p.m. on Saturday: "Sorry to bother you — quick question, are we sure about the linen color?" Write your reply, and state what time you send it and why.
M.4. (Looks like one thing, is another) A client asks you to "just double-check" the caterer's contract before they sign. You sold month-of coordination starting in eight weeks; it is currently month four. Is this scope creep, or is it something else? Argue both readings, then decide.
M.5. (Ch.1 + Ch.2) Compute the effective hourly rate for: full-service at $5,200 (194 hrs), month-of at $2,400 (60 hrs), timeline-only at $650 (8 hrs), and a five-hour consulting block at $500. Rank them. Now rank them again by how many of each you could sell in a year. What does the difference between the two rankings tell you about how to build a business?
Part E: Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐
E.1. Survey ten planners' public pricing pages in one market. Build a table: tier names used, price points, what is included, and — critically — what is measurably specified versus what is adjectival. Write 500 words on what the market's scoping practice actually is, as opposed to what this chapter says it should be. Where the field disagrees with the chapter, who do you think is right?
E.2. Find a published service agreement or scope document from an adjacent professional-services field with mature scoping practice — architecture, management consulting, or legal engagement letters are good hunting grounds. Compare it clause-by-clause against the five-part structure in §2.6. What does the mature field do that events does not? Draft the two clauses you would import.
E.3. Investigate the "day-of coordination" phrase historically. When did it enter common usage, and what market conditions produced it? Interview two planners with more than ten years of experience about how the product has changed. Write a 600-word brief.
Solutions
Selected solutions: appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Rubrics for open-ended items (D.1–D.5, E.1–E.3): instructor-guide/additional-assessments/all-assessments.md.