Planning a wedding (with WBS concept) — v1.1

As we know that wedding day is indeed a very important day of our life.

It is important to take care that everything is executed as planned and everyone knows what to do.

In order to reduce risk and loss of budget, one can follow the below example of Wedding Plan.

A wedding can be broke down to:

1. Guests
2. Locations
3. Venue
4. Banquet
5. Entertainment
6. Church/Temple/Function Hall
7. Media
8. Personal(for Bride/Groom)
9. Decor
10. Transportation

Each above category requires accurate calculations in time and budget.

1. Guests:

• Prepare a guest list, invitations, and send out invitations.
• Collect RSVP's (Take responses from the invited person, if they can attend the function or not)
• Check guest's special needs (Children, persons with disabilities, elders)

2. Locations:

• Select the location Temple/Function Hall/Church for the wedding.
• Select venue for the party (Somebody prefers two side parties like reception from bride/groom side)
• Book the locations in advance if you do not have enough time for the event.
• Check suitability of venues for special needs (if there are any)

3. Venue:

• Theme (Eg: there will be decorative backgrounds for rich appearance)
• Tables/Chairs
• Setting/Utensils
• Special equipments

4. Banquet:

• Menu (List all the items that are going to be served in the wedding)
• Serving (Is there any special serving like seating plan or employ servers)
• Special Needs (Like a child always asks for an ice cream after a meal and chat)
• Name tags for all the recipes. (Helps an unaware (person) of the food type from different religion/country if any).

5. Entertainment:

• Organizing music (Band, DJ etc.,)
• Performance shows (like dancing, singing)

6. Church/Temple/Function Hall:

• Bridesmaids (typically a young woman and, we often think of a close friend or relative who can be with the bride on the day of the wedding.)
• Bridesmen (Optional — a male attendant in case if needed)
• Wedding rings and other special items
• Decor

7. Media:

• Photographer (Pictures and Video)
• Blog on your wedding

8. Personal(for Bride/Groom):

• Hair & makeup
• Costumes
• Wedding Rings

9. Decor:

• Flowers (for wedding venue & party)
• Tablecloths
• Wedding favors (gifts given as gratitude to guests from bride and groom — optional under tight budgets)

10. Transportation:

• Decide your own means to get to the venue (luxury car/vintage car/horse)
• Set-up a car/bus pooling service for the guests.
• Book taxi's for the guests from and to the hotel.
• Provide detailed maps to avoid confusion and time kill.

I have also created a below flow chart for better representation.

Must to-do's:

—Define the scope for your wedding.

—Create a list of activities to be completed.

—Realize what vendors will be needed.

—Determine how long planning your wedding will take.

—Determine how much money your wedding will cost.

—Determine risks.

—Create a project schedule.

*********

• "Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."

Must Requirements for a Wedding Planner

Wedding planners play an important role and they are hired because of their organizational skills and event management skills. Bride Groom, chooses this in order to make things to be organized by wedding planners which they don't want to do?

The main requirements for a wedding planner must include,

1. Capturing the time and location of the ceremony (if there are different locations for reception and wedding).

2. What is the preferred wedding style? (As the style if different for different religions, (Not necessary if the planner does only one religion type of wedding)

3. What is the estimated budget?

4. Estimated number of guests that arrive at the ceremony.

5. Couple estimated time of arrival.

6. Number of children to arrive at the ceremony?

7. What is the serving time preferred?

8. What are the meals selected?

9. List of music tracks to be played during the ceremony.

After the main requirements gathered, the planner should prepare for the below points in the ceremony.

• Vendor Management.
• Seating Arrangements and Travel Arrangements for Guests.
• Food Preparation Management.
• Photography and Videography.
• Special needs for Bride and Groom.
• Time and Contact Management.

The main aim of a wedding planner is to provide best wedding experience to the Married Couple and to make the occasion memorable to the guests for years.

Gathering requirements for preparing food with 25 Lakhs budget.

We know that preparing food for 100 people is quite challenging and sensitive if we think about nutrition and hygiene. Well, all that care can be taken when we dive into preparation and planning.

Let's move to the point and gather some requirements for a customer with 25 Lakhs project for preparing food.

1. What is the event in which the food is going to be served? (Serving and Preparing is different for different occasions like business events, wedding events, birthday events etc.,)

2. How much population is going to attend the event? (The number of recipes or dishes can be decided depending upon the number of people going to attend the event.)

3. Do we need to consider preparing the different food for different religions? (Like if the people are from different religions for eg., Muslims do not like to eat pork and Hindus do not like to eat beef etc.,)

4. How many vegetarians and non-vegetarians are expected? (When it comes to accuracy and to be budget-friendly, we need to be precise about the number of materials to be purchased or prepared in order not to waste them).

5. How many children are expected to arrive at the event? (Because there are some items that children would like to have and they think are special... like, milkshakes, icecreams, chat, fruit salad etc.,) 

6. Do we plan to prepare meals for the whole day or only for one-time serve? (There may be constant population throughout the day and different recipes to be prepared for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea-time etc.,)

7. Do we intend to go for the seasonal food? (Particularly required if we think about the health & nutrition. And also saves the budget because seasonal foods are cheaper to produce and often cheaper to buy when they are in season.)

8. Are there any special varieties in your mind to be served in the event? (One will like to and they may have decided some recipes to be served in their occasion.)

10. Is the audience from other countries too. (Helps to decide what recipes to be made as per the tastes of the corresponding country people)

11. Just for the concern of stakeholder, we may ask how many members you think are health conscious? (Like some of them are diabetic, or undergone heart surgery. Just in case we think of special care about the audience.)

Hereby, the main concern is to keep everything under budget by providing convenient food service. Also considering the nutrition and quality of the food that is to be served for people with different tastes from a different religion.

Gathering general requirements for anything is not that easy.

One should have minimum knowledge of thinking about the origin of a thing that where did it come from and what are the consequences that have occurred during that thing has originated.

For example, take a website. Simply for creating a website, we would require some information on the deployment of the software, who are their beneficiaries and to what extent it would be useful either by socially or organizationally.

As the point is to gather some requirements to fulfil the functionality and quality of the software, we will gather the information depending upon the questions as stated below.

Point to remember: This is important to note that everything you make should meet the requirements of the client. Not more not less.

1. What is the purpose of the software? Either it is used for socialization or to benefit the organizations or educational institutions?

2. Who are the users of the software? Who is going to use the software? The public, admins, working staff, directors of an organization etc.,

3. Is the software mission critical? For eg., Failure of payment gateway for Amazon will be a huge revenue loss.

4. What is the expenditure one is going to spend on the project? This will calculate the effort to put on the quality and numbers of features to include.

5. Who will be the authors of this project and what is their level of technical proficiency?

6. What is the age group of the users in this project?

7. Does this project serve a global or domestic purpose?