Today's post comes from guest blogger Phara, who has some wise words for anyone out there planning a bachelorette party (tips that I fully agree with). Coming soon, guest blogger Christina will tell you some ideas for throwing just such a party Chi town style, but in the mean time, read on for a few "best practices" for planning a fabulous fete that won't end in hurt feelings or lost sanity!
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While the bachelorette party is certainly a milestone for the bride, it is often a source of tension among members of the bridal party. Here are a ten tips to make this process go as smoothly as possible, and to help keep the focus on fun rather than funds.
1. Organize a casual get-together for the bridal party early in the process. I think it’s important for members of the bridal party to all know one another in a fun, social way before they have to start making decisions together.
2. Follow the leader.Next, someone needs to take charge. Generally, this is the Maid of Honor’s responsibility. However, in certain cases, your Maid of Honor may be young or out-of-town. In that case, the bridesmaids should offer to take care of the party, but it’s still the Maid of Honor’s decision whether or not to let them.
3. Do not involve the bride.Ask the bride very early on who she wants to invite to her bachelorette party, and confirm the party’s date. The bride should not be involved in the bachelorette party after this. The bride should not be made aware of petty disagreements, or decisions about what to do or where to go. In my opinion, members of the bridal party should know the bride well enough to know her likes and dislikes. (A drag queen club is not necessarily the best idea for a bride who likes to strictly spend her evenings with wine and a good book.) Other than that, why add more stress to the bride’s plate?
In my case, early in the process, my sister (Maid of Honor) complained to me that my friends (other bridesmaids) were being “mean” to her and shooting down all of her ideas. While I understand that my younger sister’s automatic action is to complain to me about everything, this is not something that I was willing to get involved in. I reminded my sister that she is the Maid of Honor, and therefore, the supposed “leader” of this party. I explained that she just needed to be confident and establish herself as that leader. In all honesty, I think my friends still think of her as the ten year-old girl trying to tag along with us teenagers. She’s now a 23 year-old law student – she can handle it. As soon as she did that, there were no more problems. However, if I said something to my friends, I would have gotten in the middle of small conflict and made it a big one. No need for that, and everything was resolved without me. I haven’t heard a thing since.
More tips after the jump...4. Start early.Think of an estimated budget with the group and pick a destination early. (I do not see anything wrong with doing this six-plus months in advance.) Decide if you’re going out-of-town or staying local. Decide if it’s one night or a whole weekend. Obviously, weekends get expensive quickly, with travel expenses and so many more meals out. Decide if this will be okay for your group.
After the destination is selected, do preliminary research. Get an idea of where you want to go and what it is going to cost. If you are going out-of-town, find a hotel and get its rates before you send the first e-mail. If you’re going to a nightclub, get an estimate of the cover charges, etc. When you send the first e-mail, asking everyone to save-the-date, there should be an estimate of costs included. People need to know how much money they’re going to need if they RSVP “yes.”
5. Keep as many costs fixed as possible.For example, if you’re going to a restaurant, call in advance and try to arrange a prix fixe menu. If the restaurant is not amenable to that, ask if you can arrange a limited menu for your party, then pre-select appetizers and desserts for sharing and a few entrée options that are all the same price. Also, you can ask the restaurant to limit the drink offerings. They may include this in the prix fixe. Otherwise, you can tell them to offer a selection of drinks to your group that are all about the same price, and maybe allocate two drinks per person. While it may seem harsh to limit guests’ choices, it is important to set a fixed cost for dinner.
6. Collect money in advance.While this may seem awkward, it is important. There can be a lot of resentment if one person still owes money months after the party. Create a breakdown of the costs – estimate, but hopefully, you will have mostly fixed costs and few variables. Feel free to use Excel. Send the breakdown to all the women attending, and request that they pay a designated person (probably the Maid of Honor) in advance. You can organize this however you’d like. Tell everyone that if there is money left over, you will distribute it back to them. This way, one person pays for meals, drinks, and activities the entire night or weekend. This ends up also saving a lot of time and awkwardness as there is no need to collect money from a group after each activity.
(As an aside, if you are going away for the weekend, it is not necessary to collect money for hotel or travel costs. These costs should be included in your estimate, but not paid for by one person. People should make their own travel arrangements and put their own credit card down for the hotel when they arrive. )
I recently attended a bachelorette party where the Maid of Honor sent everyone a breakdown of the costs the week before the party. What was unusual was that she set up a PayPal account for everyone to pay her in advance – talk about a seamless idea!
7. Make sure you have activities for the entire duration of the party.This mostly applies to bachelorette weekends. During the day, it may seem easy to think that the group can walk around for a few hours then grab lunch somewhere. Most people do not want to walk around for a few hours unless they are visiting actual sites.
See if there is a tour of the city you can go on. For example, in NYC, there are
Mystery Theater Tours of the City. We did this for one bachelorette party I attended. You walk around a selected area of the city (South Street Seaport / Chinatown, Greenwich Village), and are met by actors throughout the walk. The actors provide clues, and at the end, the group tries to solve the puzzle over drinks. This theater is also great because all of the clues are provided over food or drinks. I would definitely recommend this for New York, and am sure that many other cities have similar offerings.
8. Plan fun, unique games.Plan a lot of games for the evening. Many should be planned in advance, trying to get other members of the group involved too. I attended a bachelorette party where everyone was told to bring a sexy item (under $20), wrapped anonymously, with a clue for the bride. The bride had to guess who brought what, and take a shot for each wrong guess. It was a lot of fun. Asking the groom trivia questions in advance, for the bride to then answer the night of her bachelorette, is also a lot of fun. The possibilities are endless – just have fun with it!
9. Monitor the bride’s drinking.This may seem silly, but too many games that involve shots may end with a bride sick early in the night. Make sure the bride, and everyone else, paces themselves. My good friend got pretty sick at her bachelorette party – before we went out to dinner – and missed everything, including the visit from Beetlejuice of the Howard Stern show.
10. End with a favor.I think people like getting something small, whether it is a t-shirt or something else, to take home. It’s a nice way for the Maid of Honor (or entire bridal party) to thank all the guests for attending. A great favor idea is
boy shorts from Custom Ink. They were a big hit at a bachelorette party I recently attended. The bridal party was also very inventive, and included a play on the bride’s future last name. Very creative!
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Oh but you know the party didn't stop after dinner. Next up, we kick back in the suite and get pumped for the big day!
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