Stripper free, vegan friendly bridal shower
Note: This bridal shower was organised in 2017, the price reflected in this blogpost is for reference only.
When I first heard that I had to organise a bridal shower, I thought to myself that would be no big deal. Just book a few places, and patch those activities together right? WRONG.
To my surprise I felt more obligated to make it a pretty big deal, being in the events industry myself, there was a standard to upkeep. After a long period of researching and bouncing ideas off the other bridesmaids, we’ve settled on an overnight stay in the city, all vegan grazing table, crafternoon, dinner and girls’ night in with romcom and nibbles.
What we did:
Grazing table
Crafternoon
Dinner
Girls night in
Tips:
Ask for help from the other maids
Find out what the hen’s wants and don’t wants are
Involve the others in the planning and execution process
Set a rough plan, a budget, prepare the guests to avoid last minute withdrawal
Ask for a deposit, this will indicate their commitment
The maids tend to pay for more, so expect that
Ask for help, there’s nothing worse than feeling that you had to do everything on my own. Even though I have a pretty high expectation and work ethics, I still love the idea of collaboration, involving the others has been one of the best decisions I have made during these planning and preparation stages.
I was also able to borrow a lot of the props from my friends/party guest to not have to buy much. With the savings, we were able to put it towards the food instead. Vegan food are expensive!
Finally, we need your help! We would like to decorate the venue up, whilst not wasting the $$ up in the reject shop or Daiso. If there are any decoration worthy items you own, and would like to lend it to us for this occasion, we will really appreciate it!
If budgeting is important to you, and it would affect the overall experience of the party, then go do some research, find some options and get an estimate of the expenses. Setting the cost expectations for the guests early, let them know what budget you will be working with and see how they respond to that.
Hi ladies, just to keep you in the loop - based on a rough calculation, with an attendance number of 10 people, the expected cost is $100 per person inclusive of afternoon tea, crafty workshop, associated venue hire, contribution towards a group gift and decorations. Dinner will be separate. For people sleeping over or not, it will vary but I’m still waiting on confirmation of numbers. Which I will ask for a $50 deposit to secure a place, since it’s on a public holiday weekend and places are getting booked out already. Please comment or message me if you have any questions or concerns in the mean time!
I had to budget heavily because I wanted to keep the cost low, be fair and see how much can be achieved; there were variations of the number of attendees which directly affects the cost per head, and guests staying over whatnot, those were some of the items that needed to be done earlier on. You can then Hens generally would cost $100+, if you think about it, a workshop somewhere will cost around $30-50, and a meal plus a drink is about $50, and maybe a show at $50+ again; that’s already $150. So $100 is actually pretty good.
Ask the guests to BYO stuff. People understand that it is a party on a budget and generally would be happy to contribute towards making it a better event for everyone. So don’t feel embarrassed to ask. You might not want to ask in the group, then just message them individually.
The amount of food that girls tend to eat is 3/4 of a sandwich or a fist size worth of food, which doesn’t sound like a lot! But this was an invaluable advice from a professional! We definitely had more food than we needed but they were not wasted since we got everyone to take some home, or had leftovers to snack on the next morning.