Weekend-long bachelorette parties in fun destinations are a growing trend. They’re a great excuse to hang out with your favorite girls for more than just an evening of bar hopping. More days on the beach, at the spa or in the woods with your bridesmaids translates to more planning on their part.
One of the trickiest details of your itinerary will be planning meals. Before anyone starts choosing restaurants or recipes, ask the bride what she wants to eat during her bachelorette weekend. Make sure some of her favorite foods are included. If she’s committed to her prewedding diet, take that into account as well. Then, ask bridesmaids for their input, specifically asking about budget and food allergies.
Outline Your Options
Obviously, a weekend with a great group of girls is the best excuse to splurge on delicious restaurants. Decide how many meals your group is comfortable eating out (this will largely be determined by budget) and plan to fill the rest of your itinerary with meals in.
Staying in a suite, finding an Airbnb or renting a house will give you lots of options for meals at home. If you won’t have access to a full kitchen, don’t worry. Simple sandwiches will taste great at the beach and you can easily keep all the ingredients in your hotel rooms’ mini fridges.
For parties comfortable eating each meal out, you may want to designate one or two really nice meals, balanced with a few mid-range options.
No matter what your plans are for each meal, make sure you have plenty of snacks and staples to keep everyone happy. Coffee, nut butter, crackers, fruit, veggies and sweets are crowd pleasers.
Divvy up Duties
Planning a bachelorette party is too big a task for any one bridesmaid. After you have a basic outline of your menu, let other girls chip in. One option is to decide on all meals as a group, and then let one person make all the restaurant reservations and one person grocery shop.
You could also give everyone a list of guidelines (for example, there must be a vegetarian option and there can’t be peanuts) to the group and assign a meal to each bridesmaid. Then, each girl can either scope out restaurants and make a reservation or bring the ingredients and equipment required to make their meal.
Regardless of who is in charge of what, make sure you have a plan for dividing costs among bridesmaids – before arriving to your dinner reservations!
