As you will have seen from some recent posts, I’ve recently been part of a crack duo of organisers tasked with our first ever hen do. Now, considering I have known the bride-to-be for 24 years, and the other organiser has known her for all of her life, we assumed that this would be easy. But the pressure to arrange something that the hen will love, the other attendees will enjoy, and getting eight people to one location at one time is quite a headache, regardless of how long you’ve known the betrothed. So, here are my top tips on how to go about the whole process, hopefully with minimal headaches:
1) Don’t do it alone.
Sharing the organising and overall thinking with another person means that if you’re seriously considering buying those neon pink L-plates with feather trim for £50, there is someone to talk you down off that particular ledge.
 |
| Go Team CharlieJenHen! |
2) Pick a core activity and centre your weekend around that.
Once we’d decided on Bounce Below and ZipWorld, we could then start looking for accommodation, sorting travel arrangements, and decide on what we’d do in the evenings.
3) Ask the hen who she wants to attend.
Don’t invite everyone she’s ever met, it’s best to keep it to a minimum so that no-one feels left out and the bride-to-be gets to spend quality time with each person. For us this was especially important, as she lives in Australia and we hardly get to see her, let alone spend an entire weekend with her!
4) Have fun but spend quality time together too.
We’re not stags. Girls like spending time together that doesn’t just involve getting hammered (or at least my friends do). We arranged for our last evening before driving five hours home would be much more chilled out with face masks, nail art and a karaoke machine. It was still as much fun, and there was still gin involved, but we weren’t cleaning up puke or wrestling with policemen as that’s not really our thing!
5) Make memories!
Remember to take old photos to stick up, supply her with stupid things to wear, and keep lots of funny memories in store for sharing. Our hen brought along her ‘friendship book’ which she wrote when she was 14 and kept us hysterically laughing for the majority of our first evening there!
6) Where possible, keep everything a surprise!
All our hen knew was that she was going somewhere in the UK for the Bank Holiday weekend. This meant that throughout the hen do she was delighted by the cottage we’d rented, the activities we had planned, and our rendition of ‘Happy Hen Do to You’ when she finally arrived on the Friday evening!
 |
| Cocktails in hand, prosecco ready to pop, all set for the arrival of the hen! |
Luckily, our hen loved the whole weekend, and all of us had a great time (except for my bloody awful hangover on the first day – gin is no longer my friend). I’ve written before about how I’m now at the age where engagements are going to be coming thick and fast, so now I’ve done one hen do, I’m prepared for many more! The next one is in Barcelona which will certainly be very different, but equally I cannot wait to see more friends off to marriagedom in style!