Katie Wainwright
Event Reflection Paper
Out of the sections that were in the textbook, if I could highlight 3 sections and go back
and pinpoint them for myself it would be the sections about taking responsibility for our actions,
creating an atmosphere, and timing of an event. I would choose these specific sections because I
believe whether good or bad, they all played crucial roles during my event planning experience.
As for the chapter about taking responsibility of our actions that played significance in the class
because at times, I found that girls in my group weren’t taking responsibility for their actions and
meeting the demands that they knew that they had to meet. Stepping up and calling people out in
your group can be uncomfortable, especially when they’re your friends and I had to become
comfortable with telling my friends in my group the things they were not stepping up for and
were not pulling their weight. When we went over it briefly in class how some of your friend
won’t be your friends after the class ends because the intensity of the class would be intense, but
I did not fully understand just how difficult working with your friends and how frustrating they
become when you hold them accountable for their actions. Also, the chapter focusing on creating
an atmosphere played enormously into my event. Having a Great Gatsby themed party, theming
is absolutely everything. The black and gold coloring of everything really brought the event
together along with the pearls and music from the 20s helped set the scene. Highlighting this
section in class made it clear to me the fact that décor was everything and that you can have a
party but if you are not really setting the scene then it doesn’t make the event worthwhile. I got
to fully understand how much décor can make or break an event. Lastly, timing unfortunately
played a huge role in my event in a negative way. You can have a great event idea and execute it
perfectly but if the timing of the day isn’t good then nobody will show up. Unfortunately, my
event was held the weekend of Thanksgiving. Between thanksgiving, black Friday, and cyber
Monday, our Great Gatsby themed dinner was held on the Saturday right between everything put
it in a bad spot where nobody would come. That weekend is one of the busiest weekends of all
year and inconveniently we held our event on that weekend and we got the timing all wrong and
unfortunately only about 20 people showed up. If I could rewind time, I would tell myself and
my fellow group members to pick another date solely because with a holiday weekend, people
are far too busy focusing on the craziness of the jampacked holiday weekend to come to our
event despite how hard we advertised it.
However, some of the positive aspects in the class that I really enjoyed learning about
was all the inner workings of event planning! Despite how stressful it was at times I enjoyed
learning about how fast paced everything was and having to think on my feet when problems
arose. I would say it was the most fun having our vision come to life in front of our eyes. Writing
something down is great and all but seeing the vision come to life was extremely satisfying and
overall left me feeling very accomplished. Another positive aspect about this class was that it
always felt like we had a support system in the class. Jess made it clear that we could reach her at
any time if we needed to talk to her about the event and I appreciated that she was super real with
us. I found it incredibly helpful how real she was too; she didn’t beat around the bush when she
saw we were behind or questioned what we were doing. At times I thought that I wanted her to
be easier on us but preferred her being tougher and more realistic on us because it helped us get
motivated and accomplish everything.
A quote that I found that pinpointed leadership and could easily be related back to my
time spent in the class would be from Amy Poehler:
“To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and
ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.”—Amy Poehler
This quote applies to my event planning experience because as the team leader of my group, I
often had to put our friendships aside and be forceful and came across as “bossy” at a multitude
of times because I had to use a more authoritative tone and actions that I haven't had to use in our
friendship in order to get things done to try and meet the deadlines that we had set for ourselves.
I did not mind at all a few of the girls in my group getting angry at me because ultimately my
grade was on the line and I knew what had to be completed at the end of the day.
