Business Events, Kept Out of the Minutes.

Client dinners where the conversation needs a second gear. Conference evenings among the towers of the Zuidas, where the after-hours programme decides more than the panels do. Receptions, openings and gala nights where arriving alone reads louder than arriving accompanied. And quiet working dinners at your own hotel, where she joins for the social hour and withdraws gracefully when the numbers come out, if that is the brief. Add the unglamorous rest of it too, trade fair evenings, delegation dinners, the colleague who brought his wife and left your side of the table uneven; if the seat matters, the format covers it.

Formal invitations are answered in kind: floor length when the card says so, cocktail length when it does not, and quiet jewellery either way. For business-casual dinners she lands precisely on the room's register, which is a harder skill than it sounds. She arrives a few minutes before you need her, never after, and if the seating plan strands her between two strangers, the strangers will have a pleasant evening.

One practical note: name badges, guest lists and registration desks exist at some functions. Tell us what the entrance requires, and she will carry whatever name you have agreed with the organisers, introduced your way and recorded nowhere of ours. If photography is expected at the venue, say so as well; she keeps herself out of frame with practised ease.

City events run on the standard hour of notice; the Zuidas is minutes from the companions of Oud-Zuid, and evening functions at Schiphol hotels or down in Rotterdam follow the two-hour honesty of their own pages. Evening receptions in the city's museums and grand halls sit on the same clock; only the dress code changes. For conference weeks, book ahead: the same weeks that fill your calendar fill ours.

The booking sequence is unchanged, who, where, when, plus the one extra line a proper briefing deserves.