Wedding season is once again upon us! With weddings comes bachelorette parties! I feel like this month in particular, my life is revolving about bachelorette parties… So I decided to put together a post with some tips I've learned about planning a bachelorette party! If you have any great tips or ideas you've learned while planning your own party, comment below!
1. Decide on a location: Chat with the bride and decide where you want to go! We chose to go to Paso Robles wine country because the bride loves wine and wanted a relaxing weekend away. But there are definitely other options out there, like Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Austin, or even Savannah (I’m actually heading there in a few weeks for another bachelorette party!)
2. Create a budget: Once the location is decided, research accommodations, like hotels or houses. It’s also a great idea to look into what activities you want to do and how much they cost. This way, you can make a detailed budget that includes accommodations, activities, food, and goodie bags. Creating a budget is important because when planning and participating in bachelorette parties, the guests typically split the costs amongst each other. Having a budget allows the host to give the guests an estimated cost of how much they will be spending. I mean, who wants to think they're going to be spending $300 on a weekend but then are charged for $500? Definitely not me!
Finally, when it came to handling money, my friend and I split everything amongst ourselves. We did this because in the end, it’s a lot easier to Venmo 2 people instead of all 14 attending. We also decided to create a three-part payment plan. For example, the first payment was due a month before the party, the second payment was due two weeks before the party, and the final payment was due at the party. This allowed the girls to pay a little at a time, instead of handing over a large chunk of money. And for us, it allowed us to begin getting payments in order so we weren’t left with a maxed out credit card.
3. Send out invites: I know everyone loves the cute in the mail invites, but when it comes to a party that requires a lot of communication, we opted to go with Paperless Post. This is an online invitation website, think Evite, but a lot more cute and a lot more organized. Of course we were able to create our invitations and send them out, but the invite also let us ask for that persons shirt size and any other questions we wanted answers to. We were also able to track if people opened their invites, send reminders if people didn’t RSVP on time, and send emails through the site to each person.
4. Don’t Wait to Book! Simple enough. If you know what weekend you’re going and you know where you want to stay, BOOK IT! You don’t want to get screwed out of a price or availability by waiting. Also, if you know what you want to do that requires reservations BOOK IT! For our bachelorette party, since we were in Paso Robles, we obviously spent a day wine tasting. If you’re thinking of heading up there for a weekend or for a party, look into Lush Limo’s. They were great to work with and very affordable!
5. Plan! Now that you know the total number of people going and you have the big things booked, it’s time to do the fun stuff! For me, the fun stuff is planning the decorations, gifts, shirts, and any other things that you want to include in the party! When planning this past party, my friend and I wanted to keep things cohesive from one thing to another, so we decided to use one font of each thing we included in the decorations and gifts. For instance, we first focused on planning the shirt. Once the shirt was planned, we used the same font from the shirt for the everything else, such as the hats, wine tumblers and itineraries. We also played off the shirts for a color scheme for the room. For instance, the colors on the shirt were white, grey, and coral, so the room decorations, like the photo wall, included shades of those colors.
Goodie Bags: I think goodie bags are a fun start to a bachelorette party. It’s a great way to inform the guests of the plans (like putting an itinerary on the guest bag) and giving them everything the need for the weekend. We included: shirt, hat, wine tumbler and ice cubes, flash tattoos, fan that plugs into your phone (it’s super hot in Paso!)
We also made a hangover kit for our guests. This idea was inspired from something I saw on Etsy and I loved it. Let’s be real, you’re at a bachelorette party, you’re drinking a lot, and you may be a bit hungover the next day. I don’t know about you but I would definitely appreciate if someone had thought this through and threw in some hangover goodies to help ease the pain. We bought these hangover pouches here and they included: excedrin, band-aid, dental hygiene, protein bar, emergen-c, wine wipes
Ok, now you booked everything and the decorations and goody bags are ready to go, now what? Pack everything up and enjoy the bachelorette party!!!
*If your bachelorette venue has a pool, I highly recommend buying my man Hank here.*
Paso Robles: If you are heading to Paso anytime soon for a weekend or you have a party up there, here are some fun activities I enjoyed:
Hike in Cambria or Morro Bay. I’ve hiked in both places and I love that you’re able to walk right along a water path.
Wine Tasting: a must if you’re heading up there. I mean, why would you go to Paso if you weren’t planning on doing that? Here’s a list of my personal favorite wineries:
Finally, I love heading into downtown Paso Robles for dinner and drinking. I love Artisan for a great meal!
