I’ve spent £4,500 on hen dos and I didn’t even enjoy all of them! FLORA GILL reveals how traditional evening with a few friends has turned into a costly three-day extravaganza
- The average hen do costs attendees a whopping £652 if they are in the UK, rising to £1,158 if they go abroad
- READ MORE: Corrie star stuns in a white swimsuit as she shares snaps from her raucous getaway with pals
Here I am in the middle of a sticky Lisbon dancefloor, a temporary tattoo of my friend’s face pasted onto my arm and feeling pretty nauseous.
I don’t know if the sudden queasiness is from the dozen shots I was forced to consume during drinking games, the fact that a girl I’ve only just met has been sick on my open-toe sandals, or the memory of the chest hair I picked out of my salmon roll while eating sushi served off a naked man.
I want to go home — but I can’t, because the minibus doesn’t arrive for another hour and I can’t afford my own taxi, having forked out more than £500 (and taken a precious day off work) for this three-day so-called holiday.
Welcome to the modern hen do.
Where a decade ago a hen party would have been a one-night affair at a favourite spot in your home town, now they are an unstoppable, unquenchable beast that could rival a small wedding, taking months to plan and spanning multiple days, often in a foreign country.
Flora Gill, 32, has spent £4,500 on 12 hen dos in the past six years. She has more ahead this summer, but along with her Instagram followers who she surveyed this week, she thinks hen celebrations have gone to far
And according to research conducted by Aviva, the average hen do costs attendees a whopping £652 if they are in the UK, rising to £1,158 if they go abroad.
As shocking as that figure sounds, it all adds up once you have factored in flights, accommodation, activities, merchandise, your share of the bride’s expenses and a pre-ordained, often colour-coordinated wardrobe.
Unsurprisingly, the survey also found that a third of people have declined a hen invitation, citing exorbitant costs as the main reason for staying well clear.
Over the 12 hen dos I’ve been to in the past six years — and bear in mind that includes a two-year pandemic pause — I’ve spent more than £4,500, a sum that would make a pretty decent dent in a deposit for a flat.
I used to be the strongest proponent of such celebrations. It was the first thing I asked when a close friend got engaged; I don’t want to see the ring or even need to know the groom’s name, I just want to hear about the boozy party.
But now, after a dozen of them — with more to come this summer — my attitude has changed. As has that of every friend I know.
In fact, when I conducted a survey on my Instagram this week, asking followers if they saw these pre-wedding adventures as ‘So much fun’ or ‘Gone too far’, 80 per cent went for the latter.
Perhaps the worst development of the hen do is that so many of them take place in foreign locations. You can see why a bride-to-be — or rather, her bridesmaids — would opt for a hen holiday.
Where a decade ago a hen party would have been a one-night affair at a favourite spot in your home town, now they are an unstoppable, unquenchable beast that could rival a small wedding, taking months to plan and spanning multiple days, often in a foreign country
Planning a party in an English city is often just as pricey as overseas options, plus it’s hard to top up your tan by a rain-lashed, windswept pool in the UK.
Yet this means you have to take days off — and fork out hundreds of pounds — to go on a holiday you may have no say in. This may not seem like a big deal, but I’m 32, which means I receive more wedding and hen invitations than I do texts from my mother.
Because another disastrous development of the hen behemoth is that while they used to be just for the bride and a few of her closest friends, they now seem to involve every female acquaintance invited to the wedding.
One hen party my friend attended featured over 30 women (as a rule of thumb, no one needs more close friends than Jesus — over a dozen is blasphemy).
Gone are the days when women share one small group of friends all their lives. Modern women have pals from school, university, work — and there’s no guarantee they’ll merge well.
People resent going on forced holidays primarily because they are going not with their friends but with someone else’s. I’ve been on several dire hen dos where the only person I knew was the bride.
Perhaps the worst part is the organising, the endless WhatsApp group exchanges that begin with finding a date everyone can do, followed by the ‘outreach’ for ideas, before the dictatorial chief bridesmaid alerts everyone to ‘The Plan’.
For some reason we assume everyone will have forgotten how to socially interact. So instead, every moment is filled with organised fun. It’s never just 6pm-1am, have dinner, get drunk, laugh, like most other evenings with friends.
Flora says hen dos have become so expensive because you often have to factor in flights, accommodation, activities, merchandise, your share of the bride’s expenses and a pre-ordained, often colour-coordinated wardrobe
Instead it’s 6-6.45pm Make Cocktails, 6.45-7.12pm Play ‘Never have I ever’, 7.12-7.15pm Quick break for bridesmaids three and four to re-apply their make-up . . . The only joy I feel is muting the WhatsApp group when the last day of the hen passes and I no longer have to read messages from 15 different numbers.
Why then, you might ask, do I go on them? Being invited to a hen do is seen as an honour, and saying you can’t attend is a comment on your relationship with the bride-to-be. It’s like turning down a date with Harry Styles; you better have a damn good reason.
I have seen many hen bashes mark the end of friendships. At two I attended, a member of the party was subsequently disinvited from the wedding. At the first, the former bridesmaid had begun as organiser of the event. But as the weekend approached, she was deemed to have failed to organise enough activities.
As a result, the bride demoted her to plain old attendee — and, in protest, she left early. Apparently that was not the kind of energy the bride wanted at her wedding, and ten years of friendship were thrown out with the penis piñata.
At the other hen do, a friend of the bride began the weekend doing what every woman is required by hen law to do: get drunker than a fresher on a pub crawl.
Yet she timed it poorly and was a few shots ahead of everyone else. By the time the classic Mr and Mrs games began — when you ask the bride-to-be questions about her future husband — her heckling was a little too honest.
It quickly became evident she was not a fan of the groom. When the bride was supposed to answer the question ‘Who was smarter?’ the hen piped up her terrier could outwit the fiancé.
But perhaps worst of all, a friend of mine fell out with a bride because she told her she couldn’t afford the hen do. It was going to cost over £300. She informed the horrified bride that she wouldn’t be able to make it.
She remembers one hen do where a friend of the bride began the weekend doing what every woman is required by hen law to do: get drunker than a fresher on a pub crawl. When the classic Mr and Mrs games began — when you ask the bride-to-be questions about her future husband — her heckling was a little too honest
The bride began sending a list of ways my friend could generate enough cash by engaging in a few simple savings tips. Her suggestions included ‘forgoing your daily coffee from Starbucks’, ‘selling your old clothes on eBay’ and ‘going into your overdraft’.
My friend eventually conceded she probably could find the money — but the hen do wasn’t what she wanted to spend it on. That was the end of their friendship.
Given how extravagant and expensive weddings have become (the average wedding cost has doubled in the past decade to nearly £25,000), it’s perhaps no surprise that hen celebrations have followed suit.
But I still don’t see why the accomplishment of finding someone you’d like to spend the rest of your life with is worthy of quite so much time out of my calendar and money out of my savings.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a hen do of my own. But if I do, I’d like to organise it myself and keep it modest. However, while I confidently say this now, I’ve seen it happen to many a friend before me.
They bemoan every hen do they attend but as soon as that ring lands on their finger, they are overcome with the contagion — and it’s time to grab their passport and their penis straws, and start sketching out The Plan.
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