Exercises: Destination Events
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State the chapter's threshold concept in one sentence.
A.2 Name the six things distance removes, and the substitute for each. Which one does distance not remove?
A.3 Give four assumptions this book has been making that are not universal.
A.4 ★ What is a local partner, and what are they not? Which Chapter 28 category do they occupy?
A.5 Give seven questions you ask a prospective local partner. Which is the most valuable four minutes of the call?
A.6 ★ Why should the couple be the contractual counterparty with vendors? What happened when Ximena went silent?
A.7 Name seven things a local-partner agreement must contain.
A.8 State the day-of handoff rule in one sentence, and say why it is proposed as a question.
A.9 ★ Give the six rules of the communication protocol. Which single habit doubles your effective iteration rate?
A.10 Rewrite three yes/no questions as questions whose answers are facts. Why does this matter more at distance?
A.11 ★ State the near-universal answer to legal marriage abroad, and the reframe that persuades couples.
A.12 Name seven things that vary in marriage requirements between jurisdictions.
A.13 What is the sentence to say in month two about legal status, and why must the source not be the venue?
A.14 ★ Name the four unbudgeted money costs of cross-border work. Which is an exposure rather than a cost?
A.15 Give the five things that actually protect you when you cannot enforce a contract.
A.16 ★ State the threshold concept about guests' time. What are the four schedule rules?
A.17 Give the cost transfer per couple, and state what it does to the guest list that appears to be scheduling.
A.18 What is the real risk of a hurricane-season date? Name four things in the risk assessment.
A.19 ★ What are the two site visits for, and what should you do on visit 1 that nobody does?
A.20 Name four things that change when a destination event is corporate rather than a wedding.
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ Write the distance audit for an event you would plan 3,000 miles away: six removals, and the specific substitute you would use for each.
B.2 Write the local-partner brief you would send to three candidates. Under 400 words, and it should let them self-select out.
B.3 ★ Write the seven questions and, for each, what a bad answer sounds like.
B.4 Draft the local-partner agreement's scope and contracting clause. Specify who is counterparty to whom and why.
B.5 ★ Write the day-of handoff conversation for a partner whose working style you do not yet know. Full script, ending in a question.
B.6 Write one week's batched message to a partner six hours ahead: numbered, deadlined in their time zone, under 250 words.
B.7 ★ A couple want a legal ceremony on a beach abroad. Write what you say, including the reframe, and say what you do if they still want it.
B.8 Write the month-two legal verification request. Who do you send it to, and what exactly do you ask for?
B.9 ★ Budget the cross-border money costs for a $95,000 event paid over 16 months, 60% in local currency. Show all four categories and state which is an exposure.
B.10 Rewrite this clause to protect you without relying on enforcement: "Vendor will provide floral arrangements as agreed, to a professional standard."
B.11 ★ Build a five-day schedule for 80 guests. Defend the empty day in one sentence, and say what you offer versus organise.
B.12 Write the save-the-date cost sentence. Honest, kind, and under 40 words.
B.13 ★ Write the hurricane-season conversation for a couple who have not yet booked, using historical probability for a real week and place you look up.
B.14 Plan site visit 1: three days, eight to twelve months out. Hour by hour, and justify the ceremony-hour visit.
B.15 ★ An incentive trip: 90 employees, five days, a resort. Write the schedule rule you enforce and the three duty-of-care items you raise with the client.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Find the actual civil marriage requirements for one specific destination, from the civil registry and a consulate — not from a wedding blog. Report how long it took and what you could not establish.
C.2 Get a real quote from a specialist FX transfer service and from a retail bank for the same $20,000 transfer. Report the spread difference.
C.3 ★ Find three destination planners' websites and identify whether they name their local partners. Report the ratio and what it suggests.
C.4 Look up historical weather data — real climate records, not averages — for one destination in its cheap season. Report the probability of significant disruption for one specific week.
C.5 ★ Ask a planner who has worked abroad: "what do foreign planners get wrong here?" Record the answer verbatim.
C.6 Find your foreign ministry's travel advice for two destinations. Report what an advisory change would do to a typical event insurance policy — read the actual policy wording.
C.7 Price a four-day destination wedding from a guest's side: flights, four nights, food, transfers. Report the honest total and compare it to §33.7.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 §33.4 recommends marrying legally at home. A couple could say this makes the ceremony fake. Take that seriously and answer it.
D.2 ★ §33.5 says to assume you will not litigate. Is that defeatist, or is it the only honest position? What would change it?
D.3 §33.7 says a destination wedding does not cost less, it costs the same and different people pay. Argue that this is unfair to couples — guests choose to attend, and nobody is obliged. Then say what survives.
D.4 ★ The chapter says to say nothing about a tropical depression at 40% and 900 miles. Chapter 27's fourth clause covers problems, not people — but this is a risk to guests' travel. Argue the other side, and find where the line actually is.
D.5 §33.6's "one completely empty day" costs the couple time with people who have flown a long way. Build the case against it.
D.6 ★ The chapter recommends vetting one person rather than eight and calls it simpler. It is also a single point of failure. Is concentration of risk actually an improvement, or has the chapter relabelled a problem as a solution?
D.7 §33.3a claims asynchronous written communication is "frequently better than the phone call it replaced." Attack that. What is lost, and does the chapter account for it?
D.8 ★ The productive struggle has the planner not ring the resort. Argue that a planner who will not advocate directly for their client, at −16 days, has misunderstood who they work for.
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.12) What does vetting become here, and what is the asset you are actually buying?
M.2 (Ch.28) Where does the local partner sit in the substitutability framework, and what must exist in advance?
M.3 ★ (Ch.21) How does "you are not the authority on anyone's tradition" generalise in this chapter?
M.4 (Ch.9) Which insurance clauses matter most, and what does a travel-advisory change do?
M.5 ★ (Ch.29) Apply the disclosure problem to a guest who cannot afford to come. What do they say instead, and what can a planner do?
M.6 (Ch.27) Which triage question kills the tropical depression, and which one promotes the ceremony location?
M.7 ★ (Ch.26) What does the distribution matrix become when half the recipients work in another language?
M.8 (Ch.31) Which parts of the objective discipline apply to an incentive trip, and what is added?
M.9 (Ch.30) What does the load-out look like when you fly home on Monday? Name three things that must be somebody else's job.
M.10 ★ (Ch.25) Where does the cascade acquire a new failure mode that does not exist domestically?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Research the legal marriage requirements for three destinations for a couple of your own nationality. Produce a one-page comparison and report which was hardest to establish and why.
E.2 Interview somebody who attended a destination wedding. Ask what it cost them and whether anybody asked. Report both answers.
E.3 ★ Write 800 words on whether destination weddings are defensible given the cost transfer and the environmental cost. Reach a position you would state to a client, and be specific about what you would still do.
E.4 Design the local-partner agreement in full. Then have somebody who has worked as a local partner critique it and report what they said was one-sided.
E.5 ★ Build the risk register for a destination event: weather, political, health, infrastructure, currency, partner. Assign a likelihood, an impact, and a mitigation — and state which mitigations cost nothing.
E.6 Compare how two different professional cultures handle a supplier who is running late. Interview somebody from each. Report what a planner from one would misread in the other.
📐 Mini-Project
Plan a destination event you would actually run.
- Choose a real destination and a real week. Look up the climate record
- The distance audit, with substitutes
- Find three real local partners and write the brief you would send them
- Establish the legal position from primary sources, and write the recommendation
- The contract structure — who signs what with whom
- The schedule, with the empty day defended
- The guest communication, including the cost sentence
- The risk register, and what each mitigation costs
- Your own cost to run it, using §33.10's table
Then do the thing nobody does: send the brief to one of the three partners and see whether they reply within a business day.
Report what happened. That reply — or its absence — is more information about the event than the other eight items combined.