Planning My Best Friend's Bachelorette Party

Today I've got a fun post coming to you! It's all about planning my best friend's bachelorette party. I had a lot of fun working with the bride-to-be's sister and girlfriends to plan a memorable event to celebrate Krista's upcoming wedding. We started out knowing the basics- that she wanted a bachelorette party in Las Vegas (which is conveniently a quick cheap flight from Portland!) in the Spring or Early Summer before her wedding at the end of September. She set up a facebook group with everyone who was invited in order to help organize the event. We were able to set a date, establish an estimated cost, and coordinate booking a hotel through facebook. Krista's sister ended up booking the rooms and the attendees all paid her back via Venmo.

In case you never heard of it, it's a phone app that acts like a digital wallet and lets you send money (up to $299) to your friends safely through your phone. There are a few other apps that allow you to do this, but Venmo worked out well for everyone. All you have to do is link your bank account to Venmo and then you can make deposits or pull funds from your account. It's a great way to split a bill if a restaurant doesn't want to take 8 different credit cards for one check (Article with more info.).

Once we confirmed the dates and got the rooms booked, we had everyone individually take car of their flights, coordinating in advance around what time people should arrive and depart. Since many people were coming from the east coast, we decided to have people arrive late Friday morning and depart Sunday night. After getting all of that figured out well in advance (like 5-6 months prior to the party) I hadn't started to do any other planning until about a month prior to the event. I had honestly never been to a bachelorette party (I unfortunately had to miss one a couple of years ago because I didn't have any PTO at the time) so I began to do research online.

After some simple google searches and reading a couple blog posts about other Vegas bachelorette parties, I started to get some fun ideas to make this event extra special for the bride-to-be. A read about a cute Q&A game that I got from Julie on her Peanut Butter Fingers blog.The idea behind it is to send 10-20 questions to the groom-to-be before the bachelorette party. Have him e-mail the responses back. Make sure there is a good mixture of cute and silly questions! Then put the questions and answered together in the book to give to the bride-to-be. It thought it was fun to put the answers on the back side of the questions, so the bride-to-be could guess the answers before seeing what her groom-to-be put down. Here are some sample questions.

When and where was your first kiss with the bride-to-be?

What was the menu for the first meal your bride-to-be ever cooked you? 

What was your first date with the bride-to-be?

What is your most obnoxious habit?

What is her's?

What do you love most about the bride-to-be?

What do you think the bride-to-be's favorite gift is from you?

What is the strangest gift your bride-to-be has given you?

What is one item that the bride-to-be cannot live without?

What was the silliest thing your bride-to-be has every ever done?

Which day would you like to experience again with the bride-to-be?

What quality first caught your attention about the bride-to-be?

What is a big dream your bride-to-be has?

What is one thing your bride-to-be will never forget that you did for her?

Between you and your bride-to-be, who is the money saver and who is the spender?

Who does your bride-to-be talk to most on the phone?

What was the last thing you and your bride-to-be argued about?

Who takes longer to get ready in the morning?

In order to put everything together, I took a trip to Michael's to get some supplies. I ended up getting a photo album and cutting our card stock to write the questions and answers on. I also picked up some stickers and fun colored markers to use. It turned out to be a fun project!

Another little surprise came in the form of tank tops for the bride and her girls! I found some really cute shirts on Etsy and decided to buy everyone a shirt to wear for one of the pool parties.

Once we began getting all of the plans together, I made a quick and simple itinerary using Microsoft Word. I thought it would be fun to add a bit of color and make it match the Q & A book.

As I mentioned before, Krista's friends and sister were a huge help in planning this as well. I couldn't have done it without them! It was great to be able to leave the decorations and cute favors up to other girls so I could concentrate on making my contributions as fun as the could be. Hopefully this will give you guys some good ideas to use in the future!