I am a woman in her early 30s and therefore I, like most women in their early 30s, have a second career, namely celebrating other people’s happiness. A bit like doing the season as a debutante in the 19th century, my social calendar is awash with christenings, weddings, and the much-maligned hen do.
From late spring to early autumn, at least one weekend a month is dedicated to giving a formerly single friend a glorious send-off into married life. I’ve taken open-air hot tub boats down the Thames, I’ve sung karaoke in bars that didn’t have karaoke machines. I’ve made polite conversations with butlers in the buff while running an internal monologue about objectification and after three summers of non-stop weddings and hen dos, I’ve concluded that I only actually have one hen do hard limit: the word “classy”.
Ever since hen dos went from a quick night at the pub with some of your school friends and workmates to four day events requiring visas and vaccinations, it’s become very normal to complain about them. And with this, for some reason, accepted wisdom in trying to improve the experience is to make it fancier. Higher class. More refined. And in order to do all those things, more expensive.
“She doesn’t want anything tacky,” I hear maids of honour saying over and over again. “Just a lovely, tasteful time with her best friends.
“We just want to have a really classy, lovely weekend away,” is the refrain.
And I get it. It’s not like I’m surprised that my friends who are head designers for cashmere companies or editors for deeply impressive literary imprints have claimed that they want to have a tasteful evening.
But here’s the thing: I’m not mates with all of the bride’s mates. I’ve never met half of them. And in order for us to spend multiple days bonding, I’m going to need a visceral human experience. I need to drink half a bottle of Apple Sourz and tell a complete stranger that I think I’d be a different person if I hadn’t had big boobs as a teenager. I need to scream Avril Lavigne in the back of a multi-seater taxi. Rub myself on a metal pole smeared with every strain of Covid.
I can see why bridesmaids thought it sounded lovely to take high tea and do a fascinator-making workshop (so fun – we can wear them for the wedding!), but we’ve got the rest of our lives to do that. At this point, the mission creep of the “classy hen” has got so bad that I haven’t even been to see Magic Mike Live yet.
Moreover, when you’ve got a child, and going away means using precious overnight childcare, a hen needs to go hard if it’s going to earn its keep. I understand why people want to go to Soho Farm House, take a long walk and then share a sound bath. I can conceive of why the concept of a long walk in the country in matching Hunter wellies might be nice, but again, if you’re trying to bring a large group of demi-strangers together and force them to enjoy themselves, you need the shared language of immaturity and transgression.
You never see a group of women acting more free than when they’re travelling in a pack, dressed for 32 degrees when it’s actually 12, wearing sashes and crowns and L plates. It’s the ebullience of the childhood dressing-up box, with the very grown-up joy of finding a sticky-floored bar where they play Flo Rida. We’ve all seen the Instagrams of classy hens going to dinner at a trendy restaurant in white cashmere, drinking a nice Barolo and sharing their best hopes for the marriage, and I can see how people get suckered into wanting that.
But if we’re really deep diving here, I think the push for “classy” hen parties is actually just another way of telling women to behave better. Your hen is supposed to be your last night of freedom and there’s a greedy gaucheness to pissed girls falling off their heels clutching an inflatable groom that is befitting of a final night of being single.
If you’re planning a wedding for next year, and the topic of a hen has just come up, I beg you not to lean into this increasingly normal tendency to “just do something low-key” and “chic”. Don’t charge your mates a million quid to rent a house by the sea in Cornwall and pretend to be the middle-aged heroine of a Nancy Myers film. Don’t spend the afternoon making lavender bags or in an intention-setting workshop. You’ve got a fiance and the prospect of eternal love, you don’t need any of that shit.
Instead, be the bridal hero we all need you to be. Give your friends what they really want: one night of binge drinking at a bar with a decent happy hour, feather boas, and the chance to get rubbed on by an oily man who claims his name is Phoenix.
