Quiz: Destination Events
21 items: 12 multiple choice · 5 true/false · 3 short answer · 1 applied scenario with rubric.
Answers in <details>. Attempt each before opening.
Part 1 — Multiple Choice (12)
Q1. The chapter's threshold concept is that distance:
(a) Adds a new category of logistical problems (b) Removes your ability to solve the old problems by turning up (c) Makes contracts unenforceable (d) Requires a different planning methodology
Answer
**(b).** The problems are the same ones. **What distance removes is the thing you have used to solve all of them for thirty-two chapters** — and every technique in the chapter is a substitute for that.Q2. Of the six things distance removes, the one planners forget is that it does not remove:
(a) Vendor vetting (b) Legal standing (c) Being there on the day (d) The site visit
Answer
**(c).** **You go. You arrive three to five days early, and for the last week you are a normal planner in a normal place.** Everything difficult happens in the twelve months before you land.Q3. In Chapter 28's framework, a local partner is:
(a) Category A — replaceable same day (b) Category B — replaceable, worse (c) Category C — not replaceable, event survives (d) Category D — not replaceable, and the event does not work
Answer
**(d)**, alone, with no substitute — **and with the additional problem that any replacement must be found from thousands of miles away in a market you do not know.**Q4. The most valuable question to ask a prospective local partner:
(a) "How many weddings did you do last year?" (b) "What are your rates?" (c) "What's the thing foreign planners get wrong here?" (d) "Do you speak English?"
Answer
**(c)** — **asked exactly like that.** The answer is the most valuable four minutes of the call. **And "which vendors have you worked with more than five times?" identifies the actual asset you are buying.**Q5. When Ximena went silent, the wedding survived because:
(a) She had a named cover arrangement (b) The couple were the contractual counterparty with the vendors (c) The planner flew out (d) The resort took over
Answer
**(b).** Eleven vendors' names, numbers, and signed agreements. **The planner rang the caterer and asked who else in Playa could coordinate; the caterer named two, and one took it.** The version where the contracts sat with Ximena is a wedding that does not happen.Q6. The day-of handoff rule:
(a) The local partner runs everything on site (b) The lead planner runs everything and the partner translates (c) They win on anything physical, you win on anything about a person (d) Whoever is nearest decides
Answer
**(c)** — **and it is proposed as a question**, because a handoff proposed and not agreed is not a handoff. **A partner who works differently will tell you if asked and will not if told.**Q7. The single habit that doubles your effective iteration rate at distance:
(a) A daily video call (b) Numbering every question (c) Writing in both languages (d) Using a shared calendar
Answer
**(b).** So that *"1 yes, 2 no, 3 I'll check Tuesday"* is a complete answer. **Batch rather than drip: one well-structured message a day beats eleven questions.**Q8. In a culture where a direct no to a client is close to unsayable, the technique is:
(a) To insist on directness (b) To ask questions whose answers cannot be yes (c) To use written communication only (d) To route everything through the local partner
Answer
**(b).** Not *"can you have the tables by two?"* but ***"what time will the tables be there?"*** Not *"is that possible?"* but ***"what would have to happen for that to work?"*** **All three replace a yes/no with a fact, and all are good practice everywhere — they are simply load-bearing here.**Q9. The near-universal answer to legal marriage abroad:
(a) Use the resort's officiant (b) Marry legally at home; hold a symbolic ceremony at the destination (c) Satisfy the residency requirement by arriving early (d) Marry legally on return
Answer
**(b).** **The ceremony abroad is then exactly the one they wanted** — no constraint on content, location, language, or officiant. **Couples resist it, and the reframe is that the paperwork is got out of the way so the ceremony can be about what it is about.**Q10. In the "marriage that was not one," the failure was that:
(a) The resort lied (b) The couple ignored advice (c) No single person in the chain had the job of establishing what was legally happening (d) The documents were not apostilled
Answer
**(c).** Nobody lied. **The couple assumed and the coordinator assumed the couple knew.** The fix is a sentence in month two: *"I need to know, in writing, from a source that is not the venue, exactly what makes you legally married and who signs what."*Q11. Where a contract cannot realistically be enforced, the thing that protects you most:
(a) A liquidated-damages clause (b) A choice-of-law clause (c) Money held back — a meaningful final payment on or after the day (d) A personal guarantee
Answer
**(c)**, aim for 20–30%. **The contract's job becomes a specification and a schedule rather than a threat** — plus specificity, photographs at milestones, and the partner's own referral relationships.Q12. A destination wedding's guests convert at roughly:
(a) The same rate as a domestic wedding (b) 52% of invited, against 87% domestic (c) 75% of invited (d) It depends entirely on the season
Answer
**(b)** — direction reliable, number not. **And the reason is a cost transfer of $1,700–3,900 per couple plus a week of leave.** A destination wedding does not cost less; **it costs the same and a different set of people pay.**Part 2 — True or False (5)
Q13. A four-day destination wedding should give guests plenty to do.
Answer
**False.** **Your guests are on holiday and it is a holiday they paid for** — unprogrammed time is not a gap in the schedule, it is the thing they bought. **One completely empty day, minimum**, and a four-day wedding with eleven scheduled activities is a tour.Q14. Optional activities should be organised centrally so guests do not have to think about them.
Answer
**False.** **Offer them; do not organise them.** Offering costs an email. **Organising costs money, liability, and your Saturday morning** — and guests who book and pay for their own cenote trip are having a holiday rather than being managed.Q15. A hurricane's main risk to a destination wedding is rain on the ceremony.
Answer
**False.** **A hurricane does not rain on your wedding; it closes an airport for three days** — so the risk is thirty of sixty guests who cannot arrive or cannot get home. **Book knowingly, with travel-disruption cover, a written contingency clause, and a plan for what you tell sixty people.**Q16. Shipping décor and stationery to the destination is usually the economical choice.
Answer
**False.** **Customs, duty, and delay make it reliably a bad idea.** Source locally or carry it — **and check what may not be brought in at all**, since many countries restrict fresh flowers, plants, seeds, and some foods.Q17. A resort's in-house wedding coordinator can substitute for a local partner.
Answer
**False.** **They work for the resort**, they manage many weddings simultaneously, and their job is the resort's operations. **They are useful and they are not a planner and they are not yours.**Part 3 — Short Answer (3)
Q18. Name the six things distance removes and give the substitute for three of them.
Answer
**The site visit whenever you want · turning up at a vendor · your own network · legal standing · the same clock · and being there on the day (which it does not remove).** **Substitutes:** one or two ruthlessly planned visits plus video walkthroughs plus a partner whose eyes you trust · **written specificity, and a partner who can turn up** · **the partner's network becomes yours, so you vet one person instead of eight** · contract structure and money held back · **batched, numbered, asynchronous communication.**Q19. Explain the cost transfer and what it does to a guest list.
Answer
**Flights, four nights, food and transfers, and three to five days of leave: $1,700–3,900 per couple.** **A destination wedding does not cost less — it costs the same and a different set of people pay for it.** **And the guests who cannot pay decline**, which is not random. **Chapter 29's disclosure problem, with money in it:** a guest who cannot afford $2,400 says the dates do not work. **So the list is filtered by wealth while appearing to be filtered by availability**, and a couple will draw the wrong conclusion about who cares. **What a planner can do: a genuinely cheap accommodation option · costs stated at save-the-date so the decision is made once · and raising, with the couple, the possibility of quietly covering one specific person's flight.**Q20. Give the four schedule rules and say which event is the most-loved of a four-day wedding.
Answer
**One completely empty day, minimum, and say so in the invitation** · **offer optional activities, do not organise them** · **keep the rehearsal dinner to the rehearsal party** — expanding it costs a night's catering and gives the wedding a dress rehearsal · **and hold a recovery brunch.** **The recovery brunch** — drop-in, no speeches, no schedule, cheap — **is the most-loved event of the four days and the one guests actually talk about afterwards.**Part 4 — Applied Scenario (1)
Q21. A four-day wedding in Sicily, 75 guests, late September, budget €82,000. The couple are American. They want a legal ceremony in a 400-year-old chapel; the priest has said yes. Their chosen local partner has done 30 weddings but none for a foreign planner. The venue quote is in euros; the couple pay in dollars over 13 months. Save-the-dates have not gone out and the wedding is 14 months away.
Produce: the legal recommendation and how you verify it · three things you change about the partner arrangement · the FX and payment structure · the save-the-date content · and the one thing you tell them they cannot have.