#29. Am I Too Old For a Bachelorette Party?

The older we get, the bigger the ask

Hey! This is an issue about bachelor/ette parties, and I’m just slightly in my feelings about the fact that I’m not having one. Today's topic is not meant to make anyone feel sorry for me or to make others feel bad about their own choices regarding bachelorette parties, it’s more of just an honest look at how weddings (and all the accompanying events, of which there are often many) are maybe a bigger ask than I previously realized. My intent with this issue is to shine a light on how weddings and the related activities–especially when they involve travel–are often a big ask for most people whether we talk about it or not, and I hope that is the impact as well. I’ll leave it to you whether you want to read this issue, or skip it!

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Trying to plan a bachelorette party for myself was the second time in the last five years I had tried to plan a group getaway to mark a special occasion and failed. The summer before the pandemic entered our lives, I attempted to organize a trip with a few of my local and college friends to go to Cabo for my 30th birthday. I lived in LA at the time and was quietly going through absolute hell in my personal life, and I figured Cabo was an easy, relatively cheap, pretty universally loved destination that would take only three hours for everyone to get to by plane. I can still vividly remember the crushing feeling in my chest as person after person politely declined the idea, eventually coming to the realization that it was just too big of an ask for everyone I had invited.

I have an uncomfortably clear memory of sitting in my bed one weekend afternoon in late June, my laptop perched on my lap, as I proceeded to plan a trip for just my ex and me, though he was crushingly busy at work and agreed to go only begrudgingly. For my actual birthday, I grabbed dinner with a few girlfriends at a random restaurant by the beach. And by the time we went on the trip about a month later, my relationship was pretty much beyond repair, and I spent most of my 30th birthday trip by myself, overheating in the scorching late July sun, reading and drinking strawberry daiquiris under an umbrella by the pool.

Nearly four years later, Paul and I have been actively trying to eschew many of the traditions we find outdated, complicated, or particularly uninteresting while planning our wedding. And while we are having a wedding that requires around 75% of the guest list to travel domestically (by plane) with a fairly “traditional” format, we/I decided to skip an engagement party, engagement photos, a bridal party, a rehearsal dinner, paper wedding invitations, sleeping separately the night before the wedding, a makeup artist, a hair stylist, and a bridal shower. We’re not immediately embarking on a honeymoon after the wedding, either–we might try to go somewhere next year. Along with wanting to give the middle finger to tradition, we’re aware that a lot of these things are often a big ask for people (including ourselves), and we wanted to try to keep everything relatively simple. Compared to a lot of people I know who recently got married or are planning weddings right now, we are definitely doing things in our own way.

In lieu of all the other typical “pre-wedding” activities we have by and large completely skipped, we came up with the idea of doing a joint bachelor/ette party this summer as our one and only pre-wedding event. Neither of us are really the penis cake or strippers type, nor do we enjoy getting wasted at dive bars, so we thought a wine tasting weekend in Napa, Temecula, or somewhere else in California (my favorite region for wine) would be more our speed. Instead of having an actual “bridal party” complete with matching outfits no one actually wants to wear, we reasoned that it would be more fun to just invite everyone who would have been in our bridal party (minus one of my best friends who is due with her second child in June) to a relaxing weekend away where we can drink wine and hang out without the huge pressure of a crazy Vegas bash. Since the average age of our faux bridal party is around 37 and the group is split between Minnesota and California, we thought surely planning our own relaxing joint bachelor/ette party and figuring out all the logistics ourselves would be preferable to the more traditional alternative of separate, larger parties with more of our friends.

Well, we were wrong.

As the apologies started rolling in from almost everyone we approached with the idea, at first I wasn’t super worried. People are busy! I get it; maybe we just need to pick a different weekend. But when we received the final text message one Saturday morning a few weeks ago from one of our friends–almost a month after we originally asked for everyone’s availability– saying that his wife couldn’t make it no matter what weekend we picked but he would try his best if we planned something, I was admittedly a little crushed. We had thrown out the option of three different weekends in a few locations, and out of a group of 11, no more than five people (including the two of us) were available or willing to attend on any given weekend. Beyond that, you can kind of just tell when the vibe is off. When you’re asking people to do something they don’t actually want to do (due to literally any reason–financial, logistical, emotional; it’s not really my business to ask), but they feel obligated to try to make it work because they care about you.

I’ll admit it–I cried. I’m embarrassed that the idea of no one really wanting to prioritize the bachelorette party I had been looking forward to made me this emotional, but I also think it’s valid to feel a little rejected by it. I’ll spare you from diving much further into my feelings on our failed bachelor/ette weekend, because this issue isn’t really about that. It’s more of an examination of the state of wedding-related events and “big asks” in general–I just wanted you to have this context first so you know where I’m coming from. 

I think a lot of my bachelorette party disappointment comes from the very simple, yet possibly dangerous, notion of reciprocity. I’ll come to yours, and you’ll come to mine when it’s time. I’ve only been invited to five bachelorette parties in my life thus far, and I gladly attended all of them. Each required travel and overnight stays, the closest being a four hour drive to San Diego in Friday afternoon traffic, and the farthest a plane ride and a seven hour drive to Telluride, Colorado. I’ve been to a lot more weddings than bachelorette parties, but a lot of my married friends either got married before I met them, skipped bachelorette parties entirely, or kept it to just their innermost circles (we decided to do the same, because this seemed like less of a “big ask” to us). But I showed up for all five of the bachelorette parties I was invited to with full enthusiasm, completely rearranging my schedule to accommodate theirs.

I guess it was just a little shocking at first to come to terms with the fact that it was never going to be “my turn.” My vision of the ideal bachelorette party that fits what I genuinely want to do ended up being too big of an ask in the real world I live in, where the people closest to me have lives filled to the brim with obligations and expenses that made the idea of a weekend getaway more stressful than exciting.

Naturally, the first thing I did after letting everyone know our bachelor/ette party was off was dive into research mode. What’s the state of bachelorette parties right now, anyway? Are people even still doing these? Does anyone actually want to go? Do my friends hate me or is there a larger trend I can look at that will make me feel better instead of being crushed under the weight of my own disappointment?

Well, 78% of couples who got married last year reported having a bachelorette party, and it’s currently the most popular pre-wedding festivity, followed by the bachelor party. The Knot also reports that what Paul and I were attempting to do–plan a mixed-gender bachelor/ette party ourselves, instead of letting that duty fall to the “maid of honor” or “best man”–is becoming more popular as well.

So it’s not that bachelorette parties are exactly falling out of favor. What else is going on?

Well, price and logistics are a major factor. In an article titled, “Your Bachelorette Party Is Going to Be How Far Away? And Cost How Much?” from The Wall Street Journal, Allison Pohle writes:

The money question is looming very large for friends of the bride or groom these days. As bachelor and bachelorette parties become “destination” events, guests need to shell out for travel and lodging and extras like themed clothes—which puts a burden on many people who can’t easily cover the costs. Many attendees say they feel an obligation to show up for these “once in a lifetime events.” So, they have to ask themselves: Do they want to skip the event and risk regret and strained relations with their friends? Or should they attend and break the bank—or, maybe worse, resent their friends for forcing them into a tough spot?

In the Instagram era, it also seems that the bachelorette party has changed pretty drastically in format as well. Pohle also pointed out:

Long gone are the nights out at a local bar before the wedding. According to The Knot, 97% of bachelorette parties in 2021, the most recent data available, required overnight accommodations.

Read that again–97% of bachelorette parties during the pandemic required overnight accommodations. And it’s not just Americans, either. Rhiannon Picton-James wrote for The New York Times in 2019:

The pressure to afford lavish nights out and trips away is exacerbated by the need for everything to be Instagrammable. Gone are the days when a night out on the town, complete with stripper and penis straws stuck into a cocktail bowl will suffice. My own experience as a friend of the bride featured a long weekend in Spain from my home in Clifton, England, with an itinerary packed with V.I.P. yacht trips, exclusive booths in glamorous nightclubs, a luxury villa and afternoon teas at high-end restaurants.

Circling back to the idea of reciprocity–and wondering if I’m at an age where I’m “too old” to have a bachelorette party–a quick Google search brought me to an advice-column style article titled: “Can I Tell My Friend It’s Ridiculous to Have a Destination Bachelorette Party After 30?” and another from Bustle that gives a quick snapshot of what bachelorette parties look like when you’re 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, and 35+. I’ll be 34 when my bachelorette party would have happened, and this description is definitely the vibe I was going for: 

Turning 30 gave you not only the wisdom that you are no longer 22 and capable of raising hell all night, but also the clarity to see you don’t want your bachelorette party to be a big blur of tequila shots and fishbowl drinks consumed through a penis-shaped straw. On top of that, your friends (or at least the select group you decide to invite) finally all have real jobs and can afford to go away for an entire weekend. There are massages and mimosas and an afternoon by the pool. That night, you get drunk enough to sing up on the stage at the karaoke bar — alone! — but remember to drink a glass of water and take an Ibuprofen before bed to fend off a hangover. When you get home you let your fiancé look through the pictures from the weekend, as there’s no potentially incriminating evidence.

But, the 35+ snapshot seems a bit more accurate in my/our case: 

There’s not a penis-shaped anything anywhere in sight, and thank goodness. All your friends are already married with kids, so there’s no going away for the weekend. Your maid of honor plans a lovely evening at her house immediately following your bridal shower, which is fine, because you don’t need one last night out as a single — You made it into your mid-30s without getting married. You’re an expert on being single. Your friends whipped up amazing food (thank you, Pinterest!), and someone had a case of your favorite wine shipped in from the winery in California.

While this hasn’t been my personal experience, I think many people around my age (especially those who have been invited to a lot of weddings and related events in the past two years due to postponements from 2020-21) are experiencing obligation overload, pure and simple. It’s a numbers game of a different kind–when people are invited to multiple weddings, bachelorette parties, and bridal showers year after year, it adds up, and over time it creates both a financial, logistical, and emotional strain on people who are forced to choose which events to go to, because attending them all is just not possible.

I guess my experience has been a little different because I never was the type of person to be invited to six weddings in a single year (I think my record was three?), and now I’ve reached an age where the only wedding we’re invited to in 2023 is our own. Part of me feels like I “missed the boat” on a lot of this by getting married in my mid-30s instead of in my 20s or early 30s when everyone was more available and pretty down for whatever, and now it seems like most people are really busy with demanding jobs, young kids (or trying to get pregnant), expensive housing costs, and the increasingly complicated nature of life in general. I can’t exactly explain why, and maybe this makes me a terrible person, but it does make me kind of sad.

I think a lot of my perceived disinterest in wedding-related events also stems from the increasing costs of basically everything right now–the wedding itself, bachelorette parties, rent or mortgage payments / interest rates, groceries, utilities like heat and A/C, dining out, you name it. Everything is getting more expensive and people are exhausted by it. In an article by Liz Schelentens for Vox titled “Why is Everything Getting So Expensive?,” she writes:

Inflation is inescapable. At the grocery store and the gas station, in almost every country in the world, people are paying more — way more — for everything than they did just a couple of years ago.

A survey conducted by CNBC at the end of March revealed that 70% of Americans feel financially stressed right now, and 58% are living paycheck to paycheck. Even among people who make $100,000/year or more, a full third still report living paycheck to paycheck, and 57% say they feel financially stressed. And yay–women are feeling worse than men about money. Love that for us. When I read these statistics, it was like taking a burning shot of perspective-flavored tequila that has definitely helped me work through my feelings. I’ve been hearing this anecdotally for a while now from so many people who are close to me, but it was interesting to learn that feeling financially stressed out is much more widespread than I thought.

It’s a big topic that goes much deeper than just my personal feelings about it, but I’m slowly making my peace with all of this. There’s a lot more to life right now than spending money/time/emotional energy on things that could be considered frivolous (like bachelorette parties). I would truly rather die than be seen as a bridezilla, so I’m doing my best to just focus on the wedding instead of getting too worked up about our failed bachelor/ette party. We only get to ask people to travel to celebrate with us once, not twice. Logically, I completely understand that now. And I do think the fact that I moved recently plays a role in this, too. My closest friends are scattered around the country, and most of them don’t live where I do, so a local (i.e. easier, cheaper) bachelorette party never really felt like a possibility to me.

The geography of it all makes a lot of sense, especially as I’m realizing I’ve missed two baby showers for close friends in the last year because they would have required me to travel. And maybe there’s a little self-reflection needed there about where I’m at in my own life! My best friend and I have talked a little bit about having a nice dinner with friends when I’m in LA in August, and maybe that’s a much more reasonable thing to ask in this particular era of our lives.

When we’re younger, I think sometimes there’s this narrative of “someday I’ll get to do that.” A wedding is just the kind of event to fill with idealistic futurecasting. Someday I’ll get to buy a pair of designer shoes, someday I’ll get to spend a few thousand dollars on an amazing dress, someday I’ll get to ask my friends to go wine tasting in Napa with me, someday I’ll have an excuse to drink a $500 bottle of wine. But then you’re actually getting married, and a lot of the things you thought you’d do, you don’t. The disappointment of my younger self is like the devil on my shoulder, whispering in my ear that I should be upset that some of these things aren’t happening the way I thought they would. But I think she’s forgetting how we got here, and when I remember to be thankful for what I do get to do, I immediately relax.

Though my younger self always assumed I’d have a bachelorette party of some kind, as I’ve thought about it more and more as the weeks have gone by, I’ve realized it really isn’t that important to me. I feel equally as disappointed by the fact that I made an ask and failed to get the answer I was looking for as I do about not getting to go wine tasting in Napa with our closest friends. And I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I do think some of my sad feelings initially came from seeing other people at their bachelorette parties on Instagram. Six people I follow–four who I know IRL, and two who I don’t–have posted about their own bachelorette weekends in the last month or so, and it’s made me feel like it’s something I should get to enjoy, too. Internet-fueled FOMO at its finest.

So what are your thoughts on bachelorette parties? Having one, attending them, from personal experience, hypothetically speaking… what do you think about all of this?

K bye,

Kelly