Wedding Project Part I

WEDDING PROJECT PART I

The Wedding Project

Student Name

University of Phoenix

The Wedding Project

One of the most significant days in a person's life is her wedding day! To ensure that such a momentous event goes off without a hitch, appropriate planning is required. And when it comes to wedding planning, picking one's partner could very well be the easiest of the planning decisions to make. Months will be spent prior to the wedding researching vendors, comparing products and prices, meeting with photographers, hotel managers, and many more wedding vendors to determine how to save costs on each wedding item (Hammond, 2007). "The absence of a clearly defined project plan consistently shows up as the major reason for project failures," (Gray & Lawson, 2005, p. 118). Without an implementation plan that outlines budgets, how important tasks should be organized, and what the contingencies are in the event that something goes awry, could result in what should be one of the happiest days of someone's life turning into a complete disaster. "The success of your whole day depends on your to organize, plan, and budget," (Hammond, 2007, para. 1).

The stakeholders in a wedding project are numerous. Naturally the bride and groom are the biggest stakeholders. But also included in this list of stakeholders will be family, members of the wedding party, guests, wedding vendors, and the officiate.

Research shows that the average couple in Fayetteville, North Carolina will spend $20,940 on a wedding (McMurray, 2007). This budget does not include cost for a honeymoon, engagement ring, bridal consultant, or wedding planner. A wedding budget is absolutely essential to planning a wedding and in fact should be one of the very first things that a marrying couple should do (Callaway, 2007). Further, a typical wedding takes months to plan. There are arrangements to make, items to order, and logistics to work out. Our happy couple may expect to pay more for their particular wedding since this couple would like to tie the knot as soon as possible; doing so will come at a price. Often, expediting key activities within a project leads to increased cost of the project (Gray & Lawson, 2005).

Because the couple has a combined income of $60,000 per year, I will use a top-down approach to the budgeting. Instead of determining the budget by breaking down the wedding into the individual components of the wedding project and summing them together to arrive at the couple's budget, I will instead breakdown a given budget on the various activities of the wedding. This will serve to drive the time and performance components of the wedding project. Further, I will then having a negotiating point to work within when bidding out the individual activities associate with this project.

Budgeting about $100 per wedding guest should provide a good start as to how many people one can afford to invite (Callaway, 2007). This should be split approximately $50 a head for catering, and the remaining $50 towards everything else - flowers, attire, etc. This may not leave enough money to pay for everything that is needed but it should serve as a good starting point. The general rule of thumb is that the more guests there are, the more formal and lavish the wedding (Callaway, 2007).

Before getting too far into the wedding planning, one will next want to determine a date for the big event. Most of the major decisions that will need to be made from this point will be contingent on thee wedding date. Selecting the right wedding date also requires more than picking a date at random. "Most couples prefer the spring and summer months over the fall and winter months due to the warmer weather" (Erickson, 2007, p.11). Some couples also have a holiday preference and look forward to getting married on Valentine's Day or even Halloween (Erickson, 2007).

When determining time scope, it might be helpful to start with the last activity, in this case the wedding day itself, and work backwards towards the start of the project. The logical sequence of tasks will be organized by determining what must be completed immediately before each successive task. Once the project network has been laid out, one should check forward by confirming that each activity is the only task necessary