Custom Post Type Archives by Date (stored as meta value) WP3.1

I would like to implement date-based archive functionality (similar to original WP Archives widget functionality) for custom post type (CPT). What makes it difficult is the fact that I need to group and archive events not by published date, but by event_date stored as a meta value.

For example, I have event CPT registered as following:

$args = array(
    'labels' => $labels,
    'public' => true,
    'publicly_queryable' => true,
    'show_ui' => true,
    'has_archive' => 'past-events',
    'rewrite' => array('slug' => 'event','with_front' => false),
    'query_var' => true,
    'capability_type' => 'post',
    'hierarchical' => false,
    'show_in_nav_menus' => false,
    'menu_position' => 15,
    'supports' => array(
      'title',
      'editor',
      'author',
      'revisions'       
    )
  );
  register_post_type('event',$args);

I would like to generate archive links like /past-events/2011/04, similar to the functionality of WP Archives widget. However, my events should be archived by the event_date meta value. Also, if, say for April 2011, there are more events than my Blog pages show at most setting, I would like to have a correct pagination for pages. And ideally, when viewing a single event I would have correct previous and next event links within that archive page. Hope that makes sense.

I’m using WP3.1 I’ve gone as far as specifing has_archive setting for the CPT. I did look around, but got confused how to proceed. Is that something I have to write myself or it could be done with WP functions or plugins?

Would really appreciate any help and tips.

Many thanks,
Dasha