CASE STUDY 2 The Wedding
Tony and Peggy Sue graduated from a university in Texas last May. She received a degree in elementary education, and he graduated from the culinary school. They both now work in the Dallas area. Peggy Sue is a teacher, and Tony is a chef at a resort hotel restaurant.
It is Christmas Day and Tony asks Peggy Sue to marry him. She excitedly accepts. They set a wedding date of June 30.
Tony is from New York City. He is the only son of “Big Tony” and Carmella. He is known as “Little Tony” to his family. He has three younger sisters, none of whom are yet married. The family owns a restaurant called Big Tony’s, and all four children have worked in the restaurant since they were young. They have a large extended family with many relatives, most of whom live in New York City. They also have many friends in the neighborhood.
Peggy Sue is from Cornfield, Nebraska. She is the youngest of four sisters. She and her sisters worked on the family farm when they were young. Her father passed away several years ago. Her mother, Mildred, now fives alone in the family farmhouse and leases the farmland to a neighboring farmer. Peggy Sue’s sisters all married local men and all five in Cornfield. All of their weddings were small (about 50 people), simple, and pretty much the same. Mildred has the wedding plans down to almost a standard operating procedure 9:00 A.M. ceremony at the small church, followed by a buffet brunch in the church hall, and that is about it. They really could not afford much more elaborate weddings because the income from the farm had been pretty meager. Peggy Sue s sisters did not go to college, and she had to take out loans to pay for her college expenses.
Tony and Peggy Sue decide to call home and announce the good new about their engagement and the forthcoming wedding.
Tony calls home and tells his mom, Carmella, the news. She replies, “That’s great, honey! I’ve been waiting for this day. I can’t believe my little baby is getting married. I’m so excited. We re going to have the biggest, best wedding ever. All our friends and family will come to celebrate. We’ll probably have 300 people. And, of course, we’ll have the reception at our restaurant; the banquet room should be big enough. I’ll tell your cousin Vinnie that you want him to be best man. You grew
Tony and Peggy Sue start discussing their wedding. They decide they want a big wedding—with their families and friends, including a lot of their college friends. They want an outdoor ceremony and outdoor reception, including plenty of food, music, and dancing into the night They are not sure how much it will cost, though, and realize Peggy Sue’s mother cannot afford to pay for the wedding, so they will have to pay for it themselves. Both Tony and Peggy Sue have college loans to pay back, but they hope that the money gifts they get from the wedding guests will be enough to pay for the wedding expenses and maybe have some left over for a honeymoon.
It is now New Year’s Day, and Tony and Peggy Sue decide to sit down and start laying out the detailed plan of all the things they need to do to get ready for their wedding.
CASE QUESTIONS
1. Make a list of assumptions that will be used as the basis for planning the wedding. And no, it is not acceptable to assume that Tony and Peggy’ Sue will just elope, no matter how tempting that may be!
2. Develop a work breakdown structure.
3. Make a list of the specific activities that need to be done between now and the wedding day.
4. For each activity’, identify the person (Tony, Peggy Sue, and so forth) who will be responsible for seeing that the activity is accomplished.
5. Create a network diagram that shows the sequence and dependent relationships of all the activities.
Note: This case study will continue in Chapters 5 through 8, so save the results of your work.