Originally Posted by dmp614

No. Meeting Services isn't going to ask for any information from the certificate that matters and the confirmation number of the redemption is meaningless to them. They will ask you for the expiration date - just tell them you don't have the certificate in your hands at the moment, but you're confident the expiration date is after the date of travel. They'll be fine with this and it's no violation of any of the rules.

In fact you don't even need to have requested/redeemed point for a BXP1 to apply the upgrade. Unless your travel is relatively soon (within ~4 weeks) or you use BXP1's all the time and know you won't "get stuck with one", it is probably better to ensure that the upgrade space is available and Meeting Services can clear you before even ordering the cert. It used to be (and I imagine still is) that certs were only processed once or twice a week and are sent USPS (unless you pay for faster shipping). So it can take a bit for the paper cert to arrive to you.

The only requirement is to have the BXP1 in-hand when you get to the airport on departure day. All the processing is done by the ticket agent at the counter.