As I have mentioned in previous posts, this year I have the greatest honour of being bridesmaid for my best friend. Now, everybody knows that the bridesmaid's main job is to organise the hen do, and in truth it was the bit I was most looking forward to. Once the bulk of the trip and activities were planned, via the ChilliSauce website, I began to look at doing some little treats in secret, as a bridesmaid you don't get many surprises due to your involvement in the planning being fairly mandatory.
I searched the internet high and low for ideas on what I would like to do and what was workable with the weekend we had planned, and I finally settled on party bags. Now, there are many places online that you can purchase already made up bags as a job lot, but this didn't seem to me to be cost effective or easily tailored to our group. I also like being creative and doing crafty bits now and again so I set out on the task of making my own!
Firstly, came the decision of how I wanted to present the bags. The wedding itself is having a rustic style theme, so I had this in mind until inspiration struck when I was looking for sashes. The ones I found were gold and white/black, and so it was that this was to become my theme for the whole weekend including the party bags themselves.
I began to trawl the internet for packaging items that fit in with my colour scheme. I found some old-fashioned sweet bags on eBay that were striped gold and white and hastily purchased them. It wasn't until they arrived that I realised they were quite small and I had now limited my options on what they could contain. But I wasn't to be disheartened,
I bought some bigger brown paper bags from the Bare Basic line at The Range to hold multiple small items With help from the internet and a bit of brainstorming I began to form an idea of what I would like to do. A lot of party bags online seemed to contain "Survival Kits" and focused more on curing a hangover. I liked this idea but knew I wanted to have something for the girls for the night before too. Therefore, I finally settled on my two goody bag ideas; the "Saturday Night Diva" and the "Hangover Healer".
This is what I decided the bags were to include:
Saturday Night Diva
Sash – to unite us as a group
Hair Tie –to have & to hold your hair back
Plasters – so rubs won’t stop you dancing
Nail File – to smooth away any breaks
Dare Card – to provide the giggles
Selfie Prop – to create the memories
Hangover Healer
Paracetamol – to ease your aching head
Mints – to freshen your boozy breath
Sweets – for a much needed energy boost
Cereal Bar – in case you feel peckish
Water – to re-hydrate
As I work in admin, I'm lucky to be able to use the work facilities for printing and laminating. Therefore, I decided to make the information cards, itineraries, dare cards etc to cut down on costs. I downloaded a free font that I felt suited the theme and purchased some gold glitter to sprinkle on the paper between the laminating sheets for added sparkle.
Happy with the direction the party bags were taking, I still had one more thing I wanted to add. A small gift to put in each bag as a memento of the weekend. I searched for something personalised online, but everything I was finding seemed to be costly.
So again I chose to try my hand at making my own. I managed to pick up some wine glasses at The Range and found personalised glass transfers for sale on eBay. After reading the instructions carefully I set out to begin. They were fairly easy to get to grips with, although it took a couple of tries and a bit of experimentation to figure out how to get the name to stick to the transfer film and not stay on the paper.
For anyone who might wish to try this at home, I found rubbing the name between my hands to warm up the lettering really helped. It only took about an hour to complete all the glasses, and I was really pleased with the overall affect created.
Once everything had been purchased,made and packaged it was time to put it all together ready for the big weekend. With 9 bags all uniform and lined up in my dining room I began to get quite excited at the prospect of getting there early to set the rooms up for the other girls arrivals.
As part of the room setup I made an itinerary for each, as I didn't want to spend the weekend sounding like a Sergeant Major, telling the girls where they needed to be and at what time. Along the same lines, I had pre-assigned who would be sleeping where to save the hassle of picking once we arrived, and to ward off any possible falling out. I felt like this worked out really well. My one and only "don't" of the whole process was to expect everything to go to plan, as usual with girls we like to faff and waste time, but the itinerary definitely kept everyone on the same page.
The plan for the weekend was as follows:
Itinerary
FRIDAY
14:45 – Meet at Ibis Hotel
Room allocation
Relax and get ready for dinner
17:00 – Meet in Becky’s room for drinks
18:40 – Leave for Dinner at Zizzi
SATURDAY
08:00 – Breakfast
08:45 – Leave for Neath
10:00 – Gorge Scrambling
14:30 – Leave Neath, Grab snack
18:40 – Leave for Dinner at Tiger Tiger
21:30 – Move to booth for cocktails
SUNDAY
10:30 – Breakfast
11:20 – Check Out and Leave for Manor Way
12:00 – Bubble Mayhem
13:00 – Finish activity and shower
14:00 – Toby Carvery Whitchurch (optional)
15:30 – Home time
Continuing the colour theme I thought it would be nice on the Saturday night out if all of the girls wore black whilst the Bride was in white and gold, this was kept a secret from the Bride and it wasn't until we were all getting ready that she caught on to the theme for the evening. This worked really well to unite us as a group, everyone still got to bring their own identity to their outfit and no one was left feeling daft in fancy dress.
After a heavy Saturday night we were all a little worse for wear on the Sunday but that didn't stop us throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into the bubble football with the added extra of some sports day races and games.
All in all it turned out to be a wonderful weekend, everyone was in high spirits and most importantly the Bride-to-be had a blast! I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of girls to celebrate with!
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Distributers and Price Guide
Saturday Night Diva
Sash – Amazon - £7.99
Hair Tie – Primark - £2.75
Plasters – Home Bargains - £0.98p
Nail File – Primark - £1.38
Dare Card – Home Made - FREE
Selfie Prop – eBay - £1.89
Hangover Healer
Paracetamol – Home Bargains - £0.38p
Mints – Home Bargains - £0.98p
Sweets – Home Bargains/M&S - £4.85
Cereal Bar – Home Bargains - £1.50
Water – Home Bargains - £1.78
Striped Bags - eBay - £1.80
Glitter - The Range- £1.50
Wine Glasses - The Range - £9.00
Name Decals - eBay - £5.35
Kraft Bags - The Range - £5.00
Gold Tissue Paper - Card Factory - £1.00
Jute Twine - eBay - £1.69
Itineraries/Signs etc - Home Made - FREE
Price per bag - £5.54