Quiz: After the Last Dance
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. The load-out is planned:
(a) In the final two weeks, once the vendor list is settled (b) With the load-in, or not at all (c) On the day, by whoever is available (d) By the venue
Answer
**(b).** They are the same problem in opposite directions, **with one difference: the second happens when everybody is exhausted and it has a deadline.** The handback time — usually 10 a.m. — determines everything else.Q2. The largest single determinant of what time you get to bed:
(a) How many vendors are on site (b) How much of the breakdown happens before the party ends (c) Whether the venue provides staff (d) The guest count
Answer
**(b).** Gifts to the car at 9:30, empty rentals as they empty, **the bar counted at 10:15 while it is still serving.** All invisible to guests, all done at full volume.Q3. Of the five load-out categories, the one that produces every genuine loss:
(a) Rented items (b) The vendors' equipment (c) The couple's things (d) The venue's furniture
Answer
**(c).** **The most valuable category and the least planned** — gifts, cards, the guest book, the dress, the top tier, personal signage.Q4. The sentence that precedes every card-box loss:
(a) "We'll get it at the end" (b) "I'm sure someone's got it" (c) "It's in the car" (d) "The venue has a safe"
Answer
**(b).** The protocol is three lines: **one named owner · moved to a locked car or safe by 9:30, not at the end · and somebody confirms out loud to the planner where it is.**Q5. The bar is counted at 22:15 rather than at the end because:
(a) The bartenders leave earlier (b) A number taken while the thing still exists is a fact; afterwards it is a recollection (c) Licensing requires it (d) The couple want to know
Answer
**(b).** At 23:30 the bar is in a van and the count is a conversation about trust. **Same principle for covers, the rental count, and generator fuel.**Q6. The damage walk happens:
(a) The following morning, with photographs (b) At about 23:30, with the venue manager, with a phone — and a message goes that night (c) By email within 48 hours (d) Only if something is broken
Answer
**(b).** **Photograph anything marked or moved whether or not you think it was you**, attribute it out loud, and send the message so there is a timestamp. **A deposit is returned on the basis of a conversation that either happened or did not.**Q7. On final invoices, you should expect:
(a) Errors in about one in four, roughly half of them in your favour (b) Errors only from smaller vendors (c) Accuracy, since the contract is binding (d) Errors that always favour the vendor
Answer
**(a).** **And report both directions.** The catering line coming in under contract because 98 came instead of 100 is invisible to anybody who does not check.Q8. The two gratuity rules that matter more than the numbers:
(a) Pay in cash, and pay on the day (b) Prepared in advance in named envelopes by the couple — and handed out by somebody who is not the couple (c) Always tip 20%, and never tip owners (d) Let the venue handle it
Answer
**(b).** **A person distributing cash at their own wedding is working.** And the question that beats every number: **does the service charge actually reach the staff?**Q9. Unspent contingency is:
(a) A reasonable planner's bonus if the contract permits (b) Rolled into the final fee (c) The client's, returned deliberately, itemised (d) Held for a year against late invoices
Answer
**(c).** **It is the last financial act of a fourteen-month relationship**, and it is the one a couple repeats to other people. **Nobody tells their friends their planner came in on budget.**Q10. The vendor debrief question that works:
(a) "Any feedback for me?" (b) "How did you find the venue?" (c) "What did I make harder than it needed to be?" (d) "Would you recommend me?"
Answer
**(c).** **It works because it is an admission rather than a request** — it concedes in advance that there was something, which makes the answer sayable. Eleven years of silence ended without a pause.Q11. The reason specific to a couple — not shared with guests — that they cannot report problems:
(a) They paid for it (b) They were not present for most of the day (c) They do not know what was supposed to happen (d) They are afraid of the planner
Answer
**(c).** **A couple cannot report that the flowers were late because they never saw a delivery schedule.** Which is why the instrument is a document you bring, not a question you ask.Q12. A finding that does not change a document, template, or checklist:
(a) Is still valuable as experience (b) Has not been learned (c) Should be recorded for the client (d) Belongs in the incident note instead
Answer
**(b).** **It has been noticed, felt, and lost** — and it will recur, and you will recognise it, **which feels like wisdom and is not.** The output of a review is a diff against your own system.Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. A wrap-up meeting should begin with the reconciliation, since that is what the couple most want to know.
Answer
**False.** **It begins with you naming your own errors** — four of them, with detail, before the money. That does four things: establishes that problems get said out loud, makes it safe by going first, **shows them what a finding looks like**, and demonstrates that you already know most of it.Q14. When a couple names a problem in the wrap-up, you should explain the cause so they understand it was not your fault.
Answer
**False.** **Write it down and say thank you.** *"Yes, but the florist was late"* may be true and does not belong in that room — **the moment you explain one finding, they will stop giving you the others.** Explanations at the end, only if asked.Q15. A referral should be asked for at the end of the wrap-up, since that is when goodwill is highest.
Answer
**Mostly false, and the distinction matters.** **The referral is produced during the work and collected by the wrap-up.** The only active thing you do is make it easy — **said once, lightly, at the end, and never mentioned again.** A planner who follows up on a review request has converted a relationship into a transaction at the last possible moment.Q16. A finding log full of entries about vendors and the venue is a healthy log.
Answer
**False.** **If fewer than about a third of your findings are about your own process, you are not looking at the right things** — a log with twenty entries and none about the planner is a complaint file, **and it will be recognised as one, including by you in March.**Q17. The couple's memory of their wedding is substantially rewritten by the photographs.
Answer
**True.** They experienced six hours of being spoken to, in fragments, most of which does not consolidate. **Then five hundred photographs arrive and within a fortnight those photographs *are* the day** — which is why a short message when the gallery lands arrives exactly when their feeling about the day is being formed.Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. Give the load-out's three sequencing principles and say why each exists.
Answer
**Anything that can go early, goes early** — a van leaving at 10:45 with 60% of the load is worth more than four people at midnight. **Nothing blocks the exit** — there is one doorway, it is 32 inches, and anything stacked in front of it costs everybody twenty minutes and is how people get hurt. **One person owns the sweep and does it twice** — because the first sweep is done thinking about the list and the second is done looking at the room, **and they find different things.**Q19. State the praise problem and name the four instruments that replace "how do you think it went?"
Answer
**A debrief that produces only praise has failed.** The couple are grateful · nothing can be fixed · they attribute problems inward · **and they do not know what was supposed to happen.** So the question has one available answer, **and a planner who accepts it has run a customer-satisfaction survey and called it a review.** **The four:** your own **finding log**, written during and after — the primary document · **vendor debriefs**, which are about your process · **specific questions to the couple about events rather than experience** · **and specific questions to two or three guests at the edges** — who left early, who came alone.Q20. Explain the return, and say what the script must do beyond stating the number.
Answer
**Unspent money is the client's**, returned deliberately, in a sentence, with a number — and it matters out of proportion to its size **because it is the last financial interaction of a fourteen-month relationship and the one they repeat to other people.** **Two things beyond the number.** **Itemise it**, so it is a story rather than a leftover. **And name the money spent on things that turned out to be unnecessary as money well spent** — the generator upgrade that was bought and not needed — **because it was, and a couple who learn that at the end of their own wedding will believe it for life.**Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. A 140-guest wedding. You gave the caterer a ceremony end time 25 minutes earlier than the ceremony actually ended, and dinner was served 35 minutes late, which compressed the speeches and pushed the first dance past the photographer's contracted finish. The couple have not mentioned it. The final invoice includes $340 of photographer overtime you authorised on the night. **Contingency remaining: $410.**
Produce: the finding log entries · what you charge and what you absorb · the wrap-up opening · and the systems change.