The Group Chat Is Killing My Vibe

I’ve planned more bachelorette parties than I can count on both hands...

I have thoughts. Your MOH Hack to Bachelorette Party Planning.

I’ve planned somewhere between ten and twenty bachelorette parties over the years, which feels like enough to qualify me for something.

What, exactly? An opinion.

But there was one particularly ambitious year when my sister and my best friend decided to get married three weeks apart. Which meant I was planning two bachelorette parties. At the same time. For two women who could not have been more different. My sister was a former NFL cheerleader. My best friend I met in college, fellow art student and the kind of person I could spend hours making weird creative things with.

Worlds apart.

Equally loved. Equally deserving of an amazing weekend. Equally challenging to plan for.

And somewhere between the coordinating, reservations, outfits, hotel rooms, payment collecting and approximately 6,000 group-chat messages, I learned a few things.

Some useful. Some less useful.

For example:

1. Confirm the freaking hotel check-in time. Not because you might be late, but because apparently the hotel might be an hour late.

2. Dressing an entire group of women in tuxedos will, inexplicably, get you more first-class treatment than showing up in your hottest party dresses.

3. Doing each other’s makeup after drinking sounds like an excellent idea only after you’ve been drinking.

4. And an entire day dedicated to sleeping after the weekend is not excessive. It is earned.

But perhaps my most important discovery after roughly ten rounds of this?

5. The group chat is killing my vibe.

So, from one former bachelorette cruise director to another, here are the five things I know now.

1. The group chat is for fun. Not logistics.

I will die on this hill.

The group chat is for memes, questionable outfit screenshots, inside jokes, blurry photos and information that should probably never be put in writing in the first place.

It is NOT where someone should have to scroll through 147 messages to find the Airbnb address you sent on Tuesday.

Because no matter how organized you are, someone will ask.

What time are we checking in?

What are we wearing Saturday?

Wait, where are we going for dinner?

Can you send the Venmo again?

And after you've answered the same question four times, you start to wonder whether anyone has ever read a text you've sent in their entire life.

This is actually why I started designing bachelorette party websites.

One link for everything informational and inspirational without any of the dinging.

The itinerary. Address. Outfits. Packing list. RSVP. Payment information. FAQs. All the things everyone will inevitably need again.

Plans change? Change it once.

Someone can't remember what time dinner is?

Girl. Website.

SHOP THE BACHELORETTE COLLECTION → HERE

2. Commit to the bit.

One of my greatest bachelorette discoveries happened when we dressed up in tuxedos.

Yes. Tuxedos.

An entire group of women out for the night dressed like tiny businessmen.

And believe it or not, we got more first-class treatment in those tuxedos than we ever did in our party dresses. I cannot explain this scientifically. I can only report my findings.

So wear the ridiculous outfit.

Pick the theme.

Buy the wig.

Wear the boots.

This is one of the few times in adult life when you can convince a group of women to dress according to an arbitrary theme and everyone just agrees to it.

Take advantage. Also, take pictures. Lots of them.

3. Leave room for the dumb stuff.

Somewhere along the way, bachelorette parties became highly scheduled events.

Brunch at 10. Boat at 12. Back to the hotel at 3. Get ready at 4. Dinner at 6. Bar at 8.

And if one person takes 14 minutes longer to curl her hair, suddenly the entire operation is behind schedule.

Calm down.

Some of my favorite memories came from the parts nobody planned.

Like deciding it would be fun to do each other's makeup after we'd been drinking.

Which, to be fair, was fun.

Was the makeup good? No.

Apparently there is a very small window where alcohol makes you believe you're significantly better at eyeliner while simultaneously making you significantly worse at eyeliner.

We flew right through it.

And I wouldn't trade that memory for another perfectly timed dinner reservation.

Leave some room for everyone to just be together.

That's usually where the good stuff happens.

4. Confirm everything. Then confirm it again.

You can make the world's prettiest itinerary.

You can plan down to the minute.

You can send every address, confirmation number and reservation time.

And then the hotel can be an hour late getting your room ready.

Ask me how I know.

There is nothing quite like standing in a lobby with a group of women, luggage everywhere, watching your beautifully planned itinerary slowly die.

So confirm your reservations.

Confirm check-in.

Confirm transportation.

And then accept the fact that something will probably still go sideways.

That's okay.

The goal isn't to execute the weekend with military precision. The goal is to celebrate your person. Sometimes the thing that goes wrong becomes the story everyone tells later anyway.

5. Schedule the sleep day.

I am completely serious.

After one of our weekends, we planned an entire day to sleep.

Not brunch. Not one last cute activity. Not “since everyone is here, we might as well…”

Nothing.

Sleep.

And I stand by it as one of the smartest decisions I've ever made.

Bachelorette weekends are basically endurance sports with better outfits.

You stay up too late. You wake up too early. You walk everywhere. You drink things you normally wouldn't drink at 11 a.m. because apparently putting orange juice in it makes it breakfast.

By the end, you're running on friendship and dry shampoo.

Take the sleep day.

You earned it.

The funny thing is, after planning all of these weekends, I don't really remember whether dinner started at 7:00 or 7:30.

I don't remember whether every outfit came together exactly the way we imagined.

I definitely don't remember whether everyone paid me on time.

I remember the tuxedos.

I remember laughing.

I remember the absolutely criminal makeup.

I remember being exhausted.

And I remember getting to celebrate women I really, really loved before they stepped into a completely new season of their lives.

That's the whole point.

So organize the information. Make the itinerary. Confirm the freaking hotel.

Then give yourself permission to actually be there.

And if you want the logistics out of your group chat, I made something for that.

My editable bachelorette party websites give everyone one place for the itinerary, outfits, packing list, RSVP, payment links and all the little details they will absolutely ask you about later.

You edit everything in Canva, publish it as a website and send the group one link.

[SHOP THE BACHELORETTE COLLECTION → See the Themes Here

Then put the group chat back where it belongs, in the fun zone!

XO,

Michaelene