Bachelorette Party Ideas
Listen to Chrystina talk you through planning a bachelorette party in Episode 11 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.
In the past week I’ve been asked the question, “what ideas do you have for a bachelorette party” twice. I figured it was about time I write a blog post about it, especially after the success of the Bridal Shower Question Card Game post.
Let’s start by answering first questions first, do you need to do a destination bachelorette party? Absolutely not. They’re just the ones that people think of most often these days thanks to movies like The Hangover. But the important part isn’t so much choosing where you want to do the party as it is choosing what you want to do. If you choose what you want to do, you can find a location close or far to make it happen.
In the mid-Atlantic region of the United States people often head to the Jersey Shore; Ocean City, MD; Atlantic City, NJ; and Philadelphia, PA. (As far as I know New York City is usually avoided because of the price.) For trips a little further out, people have visited the Finger Lakes and the Poconos. And as for a real destination, locations like Nashville, TN; New Orleans, LA; Austin, TX; and Las Vegas, NV have climbed to the top of the list. (My bachelorette party was in New Orleans!) I actually even recently heard of a bachelor party where 12 folk traveled from Texas to Panama City, Panama for the weekend. Crazy, huh?
The thing is. Each of those locations has an activity associated with it. You would head to the Jersey Shore or Ocean City, MD to spend your days at the beach and your nights at the bars. If casinos are your thing you can even through in a little Atlantic City, NJ. The Finger Lakes are a great excuse to drink wine. The Poconos are a great excuse for outdoor activities. And Philadelphia, Nashville, New Orleans, and Austin are all just excuses to eat delicious food. And Vegas, well, Vegas is really just an excuse to be able to say “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Step 1: Determine the Number of People
This is probably the only logistical thing that you need to decide before you start planning. Are you planning for 5 people or are you planning for 30? That will probably change the way you’re thinking about the situation.
Step 2: Do Your Research
The first thing I would do is ask yourself a series of activity-related questions about the Bride (and maybe the whole group, but mostly the Bride, after all, she is the guest of honor).
What is the Bride’s favorite type of food?
What is the Bride’s favorite type of drink?
How does the Bride like to spend her free time?
Here are just a few examples of answers you might find if you ask yourself these questions:
Example 1: A Bride who loves drinking whiskey, spends her free time in the bookstore, and enjoys salsa dancing on Saturday nights.
Example 2: A Bride who spent her summers at the Maryland shore who loves line dancing and a good bottle of wine.
Example 3: A Bride who loves to travel, is a huge sports fan, and spends most of her free time trying to find new restaurants.
Step 3: Choose Your Activities
Based on the answers to the question you asked, you can choose activities that center around what your Brides likes and dislikes. You can take each one of these ideas and extrapolate for any group size or budget.
Bachelorette Party Ideas about Food
You all already know what types of different food exist in the world, but there’s a lot of different things you can do with it.
Go to a restaurant for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. This sounds simple, but who’s going to argue with food? If you want to do a meal, but make it more special you can find a more interactive option like fondue restaurants, Brazilian steakhouses, or hibachi restaurants. You could also have breakfast for dinner because that’s always a crowd favorite.
Do a food crawl to hit all of the best restaurants in a certain area. Choose the bride’s favorite food and find the best of them in town, whether that’s ice cream, pizza, pasta, cheesesteaks, BBQ, or Brussel sprouts. Do your research and make it happen. They might even have a food tour that already combines all of your favorite things in town.
Take a class to learn how to make the food. You can take classes for anything these days. I once attended a bachelorette party where we made our own sushi. It was a fun experience that we each probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. You could even hire somebody to come into a home to teach a class, kind of like hiring a personal chef for the evening.
Make it yourself. If people are local, you could have a potluck at home, which will help keep the cost down and make it feel more personal. You could even get the list of recipes ahead of time and print them out as a booklet for all of the attendees. You could also all cook together, each make your own personal pizza, have a baked potato bar, or have an iron chef competition. The DIY possibilities in the world are endless.
While I’m pretty sure you could just design an entire trip around food (because that’s usually what I do), I’ll humor you all and give you some additional ideas.
Bachelorette Party Ideas about Drinks
You probably already know what types of drinks exist in the world, but the key is to turn the drinks into an activity (other than drinking). For example:
Tour a winery, brewery, or distillery. This is an oldie, but a goody. You could find multiple in the area and hop from one to another. You could simply do a tour and move on or you could try all of the beverages. Turn it into an activity by providing people scorecards, turning it into a scavenger hunt, having to take certain photos at each location, or playing a quick game of Never Have I Ever. Instead of touring the winery, brewery, or distillery you can buy all of the beverages yourself and have the party at home and create your own tour by printing out all of the descriptions. The possibilities are really endless.
Find some fancy cocktails. If you like fancy cocktails, you will find speakeasies in most cities these days. You could take a class on how to make fancy cocktails. You could have a fancy cocktail-making competition at someone’s house and finally have an excuse to try all of those Pinterest recipes you’ve been collecting. If you’re feeling extra snazzy, hire yourself a bartender for the weekend. Yet again, the possibilities are really endless.
Do a coffee or tea crawl. If alcohol isn’t your jam or you find yourself to be more of a coffee snob, why not plan a crawl around coffee or tea. I’m not sure about your city, but Philadelphia has a heck of a lot of coffee houses (and as I’ve proven, a heck of a lot of places to get chai). Yet again, in order to make this more interactive, you can give people scorecards, turn it into a scavenger hunt, have people take certain photos at each location, or turning it into a drinking game.
Have afternoon tea. This deserves a category of its own as far as I’m concerned. Afternoon tea combines a drink, food, and an activity. You get to dress up classy, have some delicious food, and feel all sorts of fancy. At least for a little bit anyway. If this doesn’t work for you, you can find a tea house where you can have your own traditional tea ceremony, sit on the floor, and pass the time away.
That said, for all I know you could do things based on other drinks too though. Maybe you can get a tour of a kombucha factory, make your own freshly squeezed orange juice, or make your own bubble tea from scratch.
Bachelorette Party Ideas about Activities
Not surprisingly, you can choose the activities for your bachelorette party based on activities that the Bride likes to do. (Shocker, I know.) Here are just a few general categories of ideas to consider (besides food, for food related things, see above):
Adventuring: You could jump out of a plane or scuba dive. Google also tells me that you can cave dive, volcano trek, shark dive, and cliff jump.
Crafting: You could find a class, host a class, or pay for a small group class for any DIY craft including jewelry making, hand lettering, brush lettering, knitting, crocheting, water colors, book making, screen printing, letter press, weaving, embroidery, pottery, pottery painting, glass blowing, drawing, or make collages of your perfect partner.
Fashion: You could shop. You could have a fashion show. You could do makeovers. You could get manicures and pedicures. You could go on a shopping scavenger hunt. You could play that game that I once played where teams each have $10 and 60 minutes and need to buy something that begins with every letter of the alphabet in the mall.
Music: You could go to a concert, you could host a talent show, you could go karaoke, you could find a piano bar, you could record an album, or you can make a music video.
Nightlife: Is this a category of its own? Maybe. I’m sure I’m not the one to fill this out, but here goes nothing. You could find a dinner cruise, a karaoke bar, go dancing, play quizzo, or find a bar.
Sports: You could go to a local or national sports game. You could host your own game. You could go play mini golf, Frisbee golf, real golf, horseback riding, take a dance class, take a pole dancing class, learn to juggle, bowl, surf, play laser tag, do archery, paint ball, paint ball like they did in 10 Things I Hate About You, or learn to throw axes.
Staying In: You could go to a bookstore. You could play board games. You could get a projector and watch movies in your back yard. You could have a movie marathon. You could have a television marathon. You could all cook dinner together. You could have a slumber party.
The Great Outdoors: You could go camping, for a hike, rock climbing, to a shooting range, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, white water rafting, or find a pool to sit outside at all day.
Theater: You could go to the opera, the ballet, or the theater. You could see a musical or a play. You could find a drag show, a burlesque show, an improve show, a comedy club, a murder mystery dinner, or a one man show. I guess in its own right, a strip club might count too. You know the Bride better than I do.
Yet again, the possibilities are really endless. Let me know if I’ve missed anything in the comments below.
Step 4: Add the Logistics
After you decide what you want to do, you can add the logistics into that. You can take any of the activities above and make it half a day or 4 days. You can do it in your hometown or you can do it in a foreign country. Decide what works best for the group you’re dealing with and how much money everyone is willing to spend, and then make it happen.
As for how to have those conversations and the best way to deal with payment, those are questions for another day.
Step 5: Make it Special
Now that you’ve decided what you’re going to do and who’s going to be there, now you can make it fun. Here are just a few suggestions you can try out:
Add a Theme: Everything becomes more cohesive with a theme, and possibly more fun. For a bachelorette party something like Sex and the City, Vegas, or 1920s could be a lot of fun. Once you have the theme you can decide on colors, outfits, favors, music choices, and any activity details based on the theme. Here’s a post about choosing a party theme if you need some inspiration!
Include Challenges: Any activity can be made more interesting by adding challenges around it. This could be needing to complete a BINGO card, checking items off a list, taking specific photos after everything you do, getting the most phone numbers, going the longest without texting their significant other, or going the longest without saying the word Bride.
Make it a Scavenger Hunt: This is very similar to a challenge, but I felt like it deserved a category of its own. Depending on where you’re going to be, how many activities you’re going to do, and how adventurous your group is, there’s dozens of things you can add to the list.
Play Games: Usually the games are reserved for the bridal shower, but there’s no reason you can’t keep them in your back pocket for the bachelorette party. Besides, as the typical college student has proven, all games are more fun when you drink. (Or something like that.) You can create games specific to the Bride, specific to the couple, specific to the city, or anything else that the group of people really enjoy. Check out the Bridal Shower Question Game, Bridal Shower Jeopardy Game, and 101 PG13 Never Have I Ever Questions to start.
Decide on a Hashtag: These days everything has a hashtag on social media. If you want people to be able to follow along, or if you want to be able to go back and find all of the pictures everyone posted, make sure everyone uses the same hashtag on the photographs.
Make Shirts: This one seems almost cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason, right? For some reason when everybody is in the same outfit it seems like more of a party. You could also just make hats, scarves, booty shorts, tote bags, or koozies. Just something to bind the group together.
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You’ve made it all the way to the end, now you’re good to go! Best of luck on planning the event, you’re going to do great. I’d love to hear any additional suggestions you have in the comments below. Enjoy!
