I’m a sucker for an inspiring story about using points for something truly crazy, especially when there’s an OG MSer involved. This one is from my friend Joe (you may know him as Colin). Enjoy!

This is the first installment of a three-part story about how I am putting together a small destination wedding in Scotland for summer 2027. This isn’t an MS wisdom or hints post. It’s just me sharing the roller coaster that is earning, then spending, millions of points on a wedding.

Growing up, it was a running joke that my father was a bit of a cheapskate. He got it from his dad, who was even more of a cheapskate. I always knew my dad was a little obsessed with credit cards, but as a kid, I just lumped it in with him being cheap. He died unexpectedly shortly before I graduated from college, and afterward my mother started sharing some of his games with me.

It turns out my dad was an MSer throughout my entire childhood. He was an active member of FatWallet, had an affinity for buckets of dollar coins from the Mint, and his pride and joy was cycling the grandfathered Priceline Rewards Visa (feat. William Shatner, iykyk). I have distinct memories of playing with and collecting some of the dollar coins he would bring home. When he died, I had no clue about this hobby & had never signed up for a credit card.

Fast-forward to now and I am fully immersed in the hobby, along with being an aspiring award-booking nerd. I have always viewed churning, at least in part, as a way to honor my dad’s legacy. Combine that with P2 and me wanting to do something a little nontraditional for our wedding and this is what you get: welcome to my not-so-big (but complex) Scottish churner wedding.

Brought to You by Kate Spade

In January, I was in Greece after booking a spontaneous LH F 747-8 trip (RIP LH partner F 😢). On our second morning there, I woke up and saw all the chatter about the British Airways shopping portal offering 250x at Kate Spade. I immediately handed my phone to P2 and told her to go crazy.

Apparently “crazy” for P2 is about $1,000. I decided that wasn’t enough, so I went back in and ordered roughly 25 purses for another $4,000. Like everyone else, I spent the rest of January waiting to see whether BA would actually honor it.

A short time later, I proposed to P2 on the rooftop of the Park Hyatt Kyoto. Very stereotypical churner of me, I know. The very next morning, I found out that BA was going to honor the 250x. Unfortunately, only one of my orders tracked. The smaller of the two, of course. I eventually had to threaten to take BA and Collinson to arbitration to get them to pay out the rest. They ultimately paid everything, leaving me with just under 1.6 million Avios and a lot of Kate Spade purses.

One piece of advice in hindsight: if you ever participate in one of these “too good to be true” shopping portal rates, start a screen recording before beginning the checkout process. I luckily had just enough screenshots to prove my case with BA, but life would have been much easier if I had a recording.

The Wedding Plan

P2 and I had tentatively discussed doing something a little nontraditional for our wedding even before the engagement. We want it to be memorable and fun for everyone involved, but still relatively low-key. Destination weddings can be controversial because of the time and expense required of the guests, so if we are asking everyone to travel internationally, we want to cover their flights, ideally in business class.

Of all the places P2 and I have been fortunate enough to visit through the proceeds of this hobby, Scotland is probably our favorite. The people are extremely friendly, the hotels and B&Bs have consistently been great, the food is surprisingly excellent (I avoid the brain ones), good whisky is available everywhere, and the scenery is out of this world. After a lot of searching, we found a perfect venue in the middle of nowhere in the far north.

The goal:

Book 11 people in round-trip business class to Scotland from all over the USA.

Resources Available

• 14 AA systemwide upgrades
• 1.6 million Avios
• A few million points in several other currencies to cover gaps and positioning flights

Ideally, everyone will fly into Inverness (INV), which is unfortunately only served by a handful of airlines. We also want to minimize positioning flights and layovers while keeping YQ/YR below $1,000 per person round trip. We are encouraging all our guests to tack on their own Europe trip before or after the wedding so fortunately not every person needs to fly to/from the UK on their transatlantic leg.

The Rough Playbook

These are some of the tips and strategies I expect to use:

• Flights originating in Inverness are exempt from UK Air Passenger Duty. BA recently reduced the benefit of this when booking with Avios by normalizing its taxes and fees.
• BA now generally normalizes Avios redemption taxes and fees based on the distance band: $499 for trips under 4,000 miles and $599 for trips between 4,000 and 6,000 miles.
• CX and JL have generous award charts that may be useful for outbound travel on BA (if the flights are released to partners…)
• For the return, I’ll target tickets that originate in INV & have the TATL leg operated by AA (no BA surcharges woo). These should avoid UK APD entirely as long as the London connection is under 24 hours.
• BA releases four business-class award seats on every flight at schedule open. The call center can access them at midnight London time, with the seats generally appearing online about an hour later.
• BA can sometimes be generous about releasing those seats to partners at schedule open.
• AA is unfortunately quite stingy with releasing TATL SWU availability near schedule open except for a few routes. I expect to be rebooking lots of flights as the dates approach to switch to systemwides.
• I’ll probably avoid Virgin metal unless the availability is too compelling to ignore.

None of these strategies are novel on their own. The fun part will be combining them across 11 passengers while keeping the routings, fees, and positioning reasonably manageable all on specific dates.

Coming in Part 2

In a few months I’ll share a small status update. I’ll cover what I end up booking, which programs and currencies I use, how much cash I spend, and where the systemwide upgrades come into play.

For now, the venue is booked, my points are ready to burn, & I eagerly wait for the calendar to open. Until then, I will be :pray_pepe: to the BA & AA revenue management overlords.

-Joe