Blog 24: Exit Interview Questions

Content:

(1) What is your essential question?  What is the best answer to your question and why?

• My essential question is "Why are wedding planners essential to a successful wedding?" and my best answer is by utilizing a proper budget for the couple. This answer is my best answer because the budget is basically the foundation of the wedding. It guides the wedding in a certain direction based on how much a couple can afford. It determines if a wedding is a luxurious celebration or a laid back event. Also, this answer is most vital to my essential question because it also affects the couple after the wedding is over. Unlike my other answers, the budget determines whether or not a couple will start their marriage with debt which will also affect the successfulness of the a relationship. Therefore, this answer is the best answer to my essential question.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

• At first, when I typed "Wedding Planning" into the Cal Poly database, the most frequent searches that appeared had to do with budgeting. Immediately this captured my attention. After researching article after article about how important money was to a wedding, it was easy to determine what my best answer would be. Each article stressed the importance of having a proper budget and sticking to that budget in order to have a successful wedding. I have dedicated most of my research to finding the most efficient way to budgeting so it was apparent that my best answer would be utilizing a proper budget. Even my mentor, Gretchen Davis Strutzenberg, always stressed how important a budget was whenever I interviewed her. 

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

• One problem I faced was my science experiment. For my experiment, I had to survey brides to see whether or not they hired a wedding planner based on their budget. I decided to take the easier route and posted it on line on popular wedding sites such as The Knot and Wedding Wire. I figured this would work more efficiently rather than stopping by at every boutique in town to ask an individual bride. My questions were something along the lines of "What is the wedding budget?", "Do you have a wedding planner?", "What is your age and race?". I did not expect that a bride would get so offended and insult me on these sites. She attacked me by saying I was rude and it was inappropriate to ask these questions. I did not think it would be personal questions but in the end I quickly apologized to her and explained that it was just for an experiment and I did not mean to offend her in anyway. Afterwards, I deleted my thread and decided to do it the old fashioned way. I would stop at boutiques and ask friends and family members if they knew if anyone got married recently. Although I suffered some hardships with my project, it all worked out in the end because I got enough data for my science component. 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

• One of my most significant sources would be my mentors, Gretchen Davis Strutzenberg and Claudia Santialles, because Gretchen allowed me to look at the process of planning a wedding. Such as figuring out the budget, client's taste, timeline, and so on while Claudia allowed me to attend wedding events to see the celebration up close. I experienced what happened when problems arose during the celebration and how to fix it quickly before it got out of hand. My mentorship provided me with a lot of knoqledge about wedding planning.
• Another significant source would be David Tutera's "Big White Book of Weddings". Although this book was aimed to brides who could plan weddings themselves it really gave me an interesting perspective of wedding planning. I trusted this book because a celebrity planner wrote it and it provided me with so much information. The book covered budgeting to folding napkins and I learned most of my wedding terms throughout this book. 

(5) What is your product and why?

• I believe my product is learning to multitask and balance different components while serving under a lot of pressure. In the beginning of my senior project, it was very easy for me to get stressed out over every little thing. But while learning how to plan a wedding and seeing how tough it can get, I believed I could handle relieve my stress better. My independent component 2 was planning a simulation wedding for my Uncle and it involved all of my answers utilizing a proper budget, providing a timed schedule, and having connections to vendors. While being forced to do all of those tasks at once, I got better at balancing my priorities.