"She found her main squeeze" bachelorette party
When I started planning this bachelorette party for one of my best friends in February, I never could have imagined that all of my plans would have to change because of a pandemic, but here we are. The original plans included a downtown girl's night complete with a blow dry bar, nice dinner, bar hopping, and a fancy hotel. Fun and fabulous, but not very original. So while I was bummed to have to start over on my plans, the party that we ended up having was fresh and different while still feeling like the girl's night that we all wanted.
Below, I'll walk you through all of the details of the party including some tips that were helpful in my prep and links to my favorite purchases!
I have to start with these adorable cookies! They were made by Sierra Miller, in Tulsa and they not only looked great, but also tasted great! I also can not recommend Sierra enough, she was so great to work with and her cookies really speak for themselves! You know I love to add a detailed touch to any party and custom cookies really wow.
Another detail that quickly became my favorite part of planning this whole party was the gift bags. I LOOOVE a good gift bag! My mom told me recently that I used to obsess over the party favors for my birthdays growing up and honestly, nothing's changed. These bags were so fun to put together, and if I'd had an endless budget, I think I would have just kept adding to these!
The first bag below was for the bride, so it had a few extra items in it, but all of the girls at the party got a bag with lots of fun goodies! The bags all included matching koozies, drink floaties, sunglasses and a weekend survival kit. All fun items to have poolside that also doubled as cute photo props! We displayed the bride's bag on a lounge chair in a prime spot by the pool, and the other girls bags near that.
The survival kits included custom water bottles, single packaged makeup wipes, and advil.... all much appreciated the next morning!
For decorations, we kept it pretty simple with a citrus-y balloon garland, and some themed pool floats. A poolside party is great because the pool itself, plus a good looking backyard are a great start that don't need a ton of extra decorations.
For the balloons, we used citrus colors of balloons in varying sizes and tucked green paper, cut into leaf shapes, into the garland and secured them with glue dots. I also found these inflatable coolers on amazon in a 3 pack and they were great! I'll definitely be reusing them for future parties!
The bride mentioned that she wanted to make sure to get some great pictures at the party and I knew that self timer pics were not going to cut it, so I enlisted my younger sister to join us for a few minutes to take a few group pictures that way everyone was able to be in them. I would HIGHLY recommend this, because we got some really fun pictures that we definitely could not have gotten with a timer! If possible, have someone in town come by for a few minutes to snap some photos early in the party before things get too crazy. This was perfect for our group because once we knew that we got some good pictures everyone was able to cut loose a little more, dive into the pool, and not worry about having cute hair anymore.
While I was buying things for the party I kept in mind that everyone would love a good photo opportunity, so many of the items in the gift bags and even the pool floats doubled as photo props for us.
Although not the girl's night out that we all expected in February, this summer fun was what we all needed to celebrate our favorite girl before her big day!
I hope you're finding ways to keep celebrating!
Cheers!
Caroline