don’t publish custom post type post if a meta data field isn’t valid

I have a custom post type (CPT) called event. I have a meta box for the type with several fields. I would like to validate some fields before publishing an event. For example, if an event’s date is not specified I would like to display an informative error message, save the event for future editing, but prevent that event from being published. Is ‘pending’ status for an CPT post without all necessary info the right way to treat it?

Query to sort a list by meta key first (if it exists), and show remaining posts without meta key ordered by title

I’m working on a custom taxonomy term page template where we want the items that are connected to the term sorted by a publication date (custom date field) – and if there are multiple items on the same day (formatted like YYYY-MM-DD) to then sort those by title, and finally sort by title if the custom field has not been filled out (older items).