CSUN RTM 300 - Wedding Planning Program for the Better Community

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Wedding Planning Program for the Better Community Tomomi Kanaida, Sara Hanna, Yuka Yamaguchi RTM 300 Department of Recreation and Tourism Management California State University, Northridge April 26th, 20071 Wedding Planning Program for the Better Community A and B: Statement of the Issue and Research Review According to Goulet, Goulet and Riddell, they spend 26,000 dollars on average for the wedding in America (2006). This number clearly shows how much people value to have a memorable wedding ceremony. As much as they emphasize on having a memorable ceremony, however, this is not the amount of money one can pay easily. Even though the couple might not pay the full amount, it should still be an intimidating number for engaged couples. Unfortunately, these couples increasingly do postpone their wedding years later, simply because they think the planning process takes too much of their time. Money is another big issue. Those who are on limited incomes suffer even more, because they must save money in order to have a ceremony that they will feel satisfied with (Brown, 1990). Just because they would not have time or money to have a wedding does not mean that they do not deserve a wedding of their dreams. How can they afford it then? What can wedding planners do to realize their dream? It is clear that there is a certain need for wedding planners to develop a program to provide affordable wedding ceremonies for people with lower incomes and students, who can not afford lavish wedding ceremonies. This is the reason why we came up with the idea to create a non-profit wedding planner group to help the students and those who have low income to have a wedding ceremony to remember for the rest of their lives.2 Usually, wedding ceremony and community development is not associated with each other, since wedding ceremonies are usually prepared by private wedding companies. However, we found out through research that there are many places within a community that could be used as a venue. The venue locations could be various, ranging from a gazebo in the community park to a church that wishes to reach out to its community members ("Rise and Rise of," 2006, p. 35) Using a public facility would lower the budget, compared to having a ceremony at a hotel garden. These public facilities would be perfect for this project, because the money spent on them goes back to the community, enriching the community assets. Also, people in the community could volunteer space or rent it at discounted price for lower income families. Recruiting students for bride’s make-up on the wedding day is another way to cut the budget, since hiring professional make-up artists would cost much more. Thus, this wedding project also promotes the couple to interact with people they would not even get the chance to talk to otherwise—meaning that it would increase intergenerational interactions in the community and strengthen their tie. Research also indicates that there would be a lot of people who would be interested in this low cost wedding program we would like to offer. Interestingly, according to the study of Knox, Zusman, McGinty, and Abowitz with college student, the number of people getting married is actually rising in spite of the high divorce rate. In spite of media attention to what is described as an "alarming" divorce rate, the divorce rate is actually decreasing and the marriage rate is increasing (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001). College students continue to value "having a family" (American Council on Education3and University of California, 2002) and getting married continues to be the event toward which courtship eventually moves. (Knox, Zusman, Mcginty & Abowitz, 2003) Thus, it seems that high divorce rate does not necessarily mean that people are not willing to marry to begin with—people are still willing to have a partner in their lives and this shows that more people would be eligible for getting married through this program and have a wedding to remember with the budget they can afford. The other research suggests the couple’s needs of professional help when planning the ceremony. Many couples have hard time in the process of putting their wedding ceremonies together. “As anyone who has organized a wedding will know, the seamless perfection of the day itself can conceal months of stress, arguments and near disasters. There is also the huge difficulty of finding the time to attend to every little detail” ("Rise and Rise of," 2006, p. 35). No one goes through the wedding planning process so many times that they know exactly what to do. A non-profit wedding planning group can give professional advice to them and make their journey to their day of wedding smooth, not costing a penny at the same time. Finally, we found out that time was an issue when a groom and bride plan their ceremony. “Time is your most prized possession when your goal is wedding day bliss on a budget” (Brown, 1990). In many cases, grooms and brides both work during the day. Planning can take all of their free time, and it tends to be very stressful. Actually, many couples go through arguments through the process of planning their weddings. Wedding planners are experts, and we would be able to make the planning process much easier by4pooling together the information about community members, volunteers, and resources, which would give clear guidance to the couple. Thus, the couple will not waste their precious time. This would help ease the stress of brides, grooms, and their family members, which would lead to their happy faces on the wedding day. To conclude, this project will be beneficial to many couples living in any community. It will allow them to actively participate in a memorable moment of their lives by utilizing what their community has to offer. In addition, this will have the added benefit of building a stronger community by making them realize and learn about their community resources, and giving them the opportunities to meet new people in their community. Our job is to provide the best moment of the lives for the brides, grooms, and their families, introduce the newly engaged couple to as many members in the community as possible, and make them realize that community supports the couple’s new start of their lives. C. Survey We did a survey with married couples to see what they thought about their weddings. Q1.) When asked why they were unable to have their


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CSUN RTM 300 - Wedding Planning Program for the Better Community

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