Exercises: After the Last Dance
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State the load-out threshold concept. What determines everything else in a breakdown?
A.2 Name the five load-out categories with an example each. Which produces every genuine loss?
A.3 Give the three principles of load-out sequencing.
A.4 ★ State the card-box protocol in three lines, and give the sentence that precedes every loss.
A.5 Why two sweeps, at 22:00 and 23:00, on the same route? What does each find that the other does not?
A.6 What is the damage walk? When, with whom, with what, and why does it work?
A.7 ★ Name the three questions that must be settled about the collection window at contracting rather than on Sunday morning. Which one fails most often?
A.8 List six things that vary on a final invoice. Roughly how often is there an error, and in whose favour?
A.9 State the two gratuity rules that matter more than any of the numbers.
A.10 ★ What is the return, and why does it matter out of proportion to the amount?
A.11 Give the three vendor debrief questions. Which one works, and why?
A.12 State the praise problem and its four reasons. Which is specific to a couple rather than a guest?
A.13 ★ Name the four instruments that replace "how do you think it went?"
A.14 What four things does going first accomplish in a wrap-up meeting?
A.15 Why do you never defend a finding in a wrap-up?
A.16 ★ Distinguish a finding, a lesson, and a systems change with an example of each.
A.17 What is the two-week window and what happens after it?
A.18 Give the useful ratio for a finding log, and say what it diagnoses.
A.19 ★ Where does a referral actually come from, and what is the only active thing you do?
A.20 In what way do the photographs rewrite the couple's memory of the day, and what are the three consequences?
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Write the load-out run sheet for a 130-guest hotel wedding: music ends at midnight, the room is needed for a conference at 8 a.m. Include everything that happens before midnight.
B.2 A venue hands back at 10 a.m. Sunday. Marquee down Tuesday, rentals collected Monday, generator "within 48 hours." Write the three questions and the answers you need, and say what you do if the venue says no.
B.3 ★ Write the personal-items sweep list for a wedding you know. Then write the second sweep's route and say why it differs.
B.4 Write the damage-walk message sent at 23:40 after a wedding where a guest spilled red wine on a wall and a chair leg was already loose on arrival. Three sentences.
B.5 Reconcile these lines and state what each variance means: catering budgeted 9,000 / contracted 9,340 / paid 9,105 · bar 2,000 / 1,850 / 2,240 · florals 3,000 / 2,900 / 2,900 · photography 3,500 / 3,500 / 3,900. Then say which one you raise first with the couple and why.
B.6 ★ Write the gratuity schedule for a 100-guest wedding with a caterer (service charge included), two bartenders, a three-person delivery crew, hair and makeup, an officiant, a DJ, and a photographer who owns their business. Say what you tell the couple and when.
B.7 Write the return script for a couple who spent $1,780 of a $1,900 contingency — the opposite case. What changes?
B.8 ★ Write the wrap-up opening for a wedding where you made a genuine, costly error: you gave the caterer the wrong ceremony end time and dinner was 35 minutes late. Full script, including the money.
B.9 Write the note ending a working relationship with a florist who has been late twice and whose quality has dropped. Honest, without heat, and under 150 words.
B.10 ★ Turn these three findings into systems changes: "the minibus time was announced not printed" · "the stationery budget has been $300 wrong since booking" · "nobody knew who owned the card box until 10:40."
B.11 Write the Monday message for a couple whose wedding was, honestly, difficult — two vendor failures and a family incident.
B.12 ★ Design the four specific questions you would ask two guests, two weeks after. Say which guests you would ask and why.
B.13 A couple asks at the wrap-up why $200 was spent on a generator upgrade that was not needed. Write the answer.
B.14 Write the vendor thank-you note that names the thing. Pick a real vendor role and be specific.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Get a real venue contract and find its handback time, its damage-deposit terms, and its policy on equipment remaining overnight. Report all three, and whether you had to ask.
C.2 Ask a working planner what they have left behind or lost. Everybody has one. Report the category it was in.
C.3 ★ Ask three vendors — of any kind — "what do planners make harder than it needs to be?" Record the answers verbatim.
C.4 Find out what the gratuity norms actually are where you work. Three sources, and note where they disagree.
C.5 Look at any event you have run or attended and write five findings in the left-column form: subject, mechanism, number.
C.6 ★ Take one finding and produce the systems change. Then actually make the change to the document. Report what you changed.
C.7 Read three online reviews of wedding planners and count how many mention something specific versus something general. Report the ratio and what the specific ones mention.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 §30.6 claims that returning unspent money matters out of proportion to its amount. Is that a claim about ethics or about marketing? Does it matter which?
D.2 ★ §30.8 says a debrief producing only praise has failed. A couple could reasonably object that they are not obliged to critique their own wedding, and that being asked to find fault in the best day of their life is an imposition. Argue that, then say what survives.
D.3 The wrap-up script has the planner naming four of their own errors, unprompted. Argue that this is bad practice — it undermines confidence, invites blame, and creates a record. Then decide.
D.4 ★ §30.9 says a referral is produced during the work and not requested. Chapter 38 is going to say something about marketing that may contradict this. Predict what, and say how you would reconcile them.
D.5 §30.12 concedes that the photographs argument cuts against Chapter 29's notice ranking. Is that a concession or a refutation? Work out what is actually true about the marginal dollar when two different time horizons are in play.
D.6 ★ The finding log's "one-third about your own process" ratio is asserted with no basis. Attack it. Is there any principled number, or is the ratio a rhetorical device?
D.7 This chapter recommends roughly eleven distinct post-event activities. Estimate the total hours for one wedding, price it at Chapter 37's rates, and say honestly whether a planner charging a $3,500 fee can afford all of it. If not, which three survive?
D.8 §30.7's "end it explicitly" advice is uncomfortable and most planners do not do it. Is the advice right, or is it advice that is easy to give and costly to take?
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.7) What does the reconciliation's fourth column add, and what is the only thing that improves your estimating?
M.2 (Ch.13) Which two decisions made at contracting decide whether the load-out costs money? And what are the load-in photographs for?
M.3 ★ (Ch.29) How does the disclosure problem transfer to the couple, and what is the extra reason that does not apply to guests?
M.4 (Ch.27) Which day-of instrument produces most of the finding log, and at what times?
M.5 ★ (Ch.28) The incident note and the finding log are different documents. Say precisely how, and what happens if you merge them.
M.6 (Ch.14, 16) The stationery line has been $300 wrong since Chapter 14 and was caught in Chapter 16. Why was it never fixed, and what does that say about audits?
M.7 ★ (Ch.15) The bar count at 22:15 feeds something Chapter 15 admitted it could not support. What, and what would it take for the count to be worth anything?
M.8 (Ch.23) Why does the 21:05 finish time appear in this chapter, and in which section?
M.9 ★ (Ch.9) A damage claim arrives on Tuesday. What did Chapter 9 need, what did §30.4 provide, and what did Chapter 28 §28.9 add?
M.10 (Ch.35 preview) Which load-out category is Chapter 35's problem, and when should it have been decided?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Design a post-event review instrument that a solo planner would actually complete after every wedding. Under thirty minutes, and it must produce systems changes rather than reflections. Then use it on a real event and report what it missed.
E.2 Research how another industry runs post-incident and post-project review — aviation, software, surgery, construction. Report three practices this chapter should adopt and one it should not.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on why post-event review is the most widely skipped professional practice in event planning. Give structural reasons, not moral ones, and propose one change that would make it happen.
E.4 Build the "housekeeping list" a couple receives on the Monday. One page, complete, and usable by somebody who has never been married.
E.5 ★ §30.8's four instruments produce different kinds of information. Design a study that would establish which of the four finds the most actionable findings per hour spent. Be specific about how you would define "actionable."
E.6 Interview somebody who was married one to three years ago about what they remember. Then ask what they remember from photographs versus from the day. Report the boundary — and whether they can tell.
📐 Mini-Project
Close out one real event, completely.
- The load-out run sheet, written before the event, executed, and then marked up with what actually happened
- The handback, with photographs and a same-night message
- The reconciliation, four columns, every line
- The finding log — and count what fraction is about your own process
- Two vendor debriefs, using the first question
- The wrap-up, going first, with at least three of your own errors named
- The systems changes — the actual diffs to your actual documents
Then, three months later, open the changed documents and check they are still changed.
Report honestly whether they are. Most are not, and that finding is worth more than the other six.