Planning a Bachelor Party

[Vince, Pt. II]

So my little brother is getting hitched in May. I'm the best man, and am trying to juggle the myriad of people he wants at his bachelor party. Unfortunately, he doesn't have very many close friends - he filled out his groomsmen with my best friend. That being said, he's somehow come up with 12 guys he wants at the bachelor party. To make matters better, each of the different groups really doesn't know one another at all:

-The bride-to-be's two younger brothers (one of whom isn't yet 21)
-Our cousins
-His friends
-His co-workers

In an effort to keep this accessible to everyone and fun, I'm thinking of the following as a general plan:

Three nights: Thursday night to Sunday morning.
Location: Lake Tahoe. It's nearby, a 4 hour(-ish) drive, and I can get a place with 9 rooms for less than $1,700 for the whole weekend.
Activities:

• Friday, a group activity - I'm trying to book a place for Archery Tag, but that's up in the air at the moment. Have a couple other ideas as potential fallback options.
• Friday night, group dinner - Need to figure out the place, but this is going to be the biggest (only?) planned meal of the trip.
• Saturday, open day - Nothing planned. Let people figure their own stuff out. There's a ski resort right down the road as well as some casinos.
• Saturday night - ???

Part of the problem here is the diversity in people invited makes it hard to plan for costs. Half of us are professionals with disposable income, the other half have temporary jobs or are still in college.

Thoughts or suggestions? I'm not sure if I should plan more activities, less activities, or how much I should expect people to be willing to pay out-of-pocket for this sort of thing. Ideally, everyone pitches in evenly except for the groom-to-be, though I'm sure I'll be saddled with some costs.

[Logan]

Bachelor parties with my group of friends, where it's at least two nights, is usually split between one night of BIG dinner and one night of BIG drinking. Obviously the BIG drinking ends up happening every night anyway, but the idea is that Friday night we'll do the full group dinner, likely a big meal where we won't want to be locked into a certain plan after in case people get knocked out by the food. Then Saturday night might be a table reservation at a club/lounge type place where bottles are being bought. So a quick meal before that helps save money.

Anyway, I notice you don't have a post-dinner Friday night slot in that plan. That comes back to what kind of group this is, but better yet what kind of guy your brother is? Is this going to be a heavy drinking group? Are strippers going to be involved at any point (HIS call, not the group's)? Are any other illegal activities being considered/partaken in?

The house/location idea sounds great, reasonably priced for 3 nights and I assume there are a variety of activities you can do around there.

I would caution against having an "open day plan". Instead, come up with a very rough itinerary but make it clear it's optional. "Ski resort from 11-3, casino from 5-8" etc. From my experience, especially when you have a random collection of people, not having anything resembling a plan will result in the group going its separate ways which isn't the point of a BP.

Elephant in the room is the under 21 brother of the bride, again if this is going to be a drinking group. It can't be on you to find a place that will let in an underage kid, and it isn't fair to the groom to have his bachelor party be a fully PG affair. That's really on his future wife to make the call that it's okay to ditch him.

As for the costs, do your best to make all the costs known upfront, broken down by day/activity. Overestimate a bit to be safe and be sure to include tips/taxes. If some can't swing it for money reasons, then it can be your call as to who you might help out. Cousins can maybe help out cousins, etc.

I was my brother's best man. I was barely 21 for his BP...he and his friends were 31ish. I paid for my share of dinner and some drinks here and there but his friends took care of me the rest of the way. Obviously I was just one, and there were a lot of them, but if you can help out someone that he will really want there...it's your brother, and if you can swing it, great.

[Suicane75]

A few rules.

1) Watching her pee is fine, but once that happens, things will get weird really quick.
2) Have a dedicated bartender, if only because bad things always happen when strippers and bottles are strewn about willy nilly.

[CrimsonFox]

Could go for a meal place that serves family platter style stuff like chinese places
and yeah can separate the activities if you want
like okay this is the safe event and later will be the drinking crowd.

Could set something up for the people that don't go drinking. If it's fun enough some of the over 21s will do that instead of drinking

[Vince, Pt. II]

So, that's part of the issue here. My brother has never been a strippers kind of guy, so that's easy. As for the rest? He's a drinker and a partier. And his bride is ten years his junior, extremely religious, home schooled, naive...despite those things I actually like her, even though I think they are a terrible match because of them. Apparently her brothers drink (even the under 21 one), but we likely aren't getting the young one into a bar/club.

I plan on having plenty of beer/alcohol at the rental, and will probably have things set up for cards, beer pong, and/or other drinking games, but I have literally no idea how the group is going to act. I really KNOW exactly four of the people he wants invited, including him.

I waffled a lot on how I wanted to plan this because I wanted to make everyone happy, and with the diversity of the group it was extremely difficult to find something that fit that mold. In the end, I want my brother to have a great time. If I can get everyone else on the same page, great. If not, eh...that's a bummer, but I'll live.

[timmae]

Is it possible to grab their contact info from your brother and give them a call to introduce yourself and get their must have's, don't do's, and what not's? Just be open and honest and see what they say. It is likely you'll be left with the same decisions but at least you'll know they aren't thinking you're scheming anything.

[Vince, Pt. II]

I almost feel like that's bringing too many cooks into the kitchen. I mean if I'm point blank told 'that one thing really sucks and I won't do it' and everyone else is all for it, do I table it because one guy didn't like it?

Edit: I do have all their contact info, so this is a legitimate option.

[dawgfan]

Have you thought about scaling back the time, i.e. rent the place for Friday and Saturday nights only, and making it optional for folks that want to do a group activity during the day Friday?

Given the wide disparity in the people that will be there, less forced time together = less chances for people to get fed up with each other. Also, perhaps the activities that involve everyone are the evening ones (i.e. Friday night dinner, Saturday night dinner/drinking/whatever it is) and allow the daytime things to sort themselves out. Folks that want to ski or board can do so, folks that would rather hit the casinos can do that.

This is assuming you don't find an easy consensus among all parties. If you throw out ideas and everyone seems enthusiastic about one or the other (or another option), then go for just that I guess.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

I almost feel like that's bringing too many cooks into the kitchen. I mean if I'm point blank told 'that one thing really sucks and I won't do it' and everyone else is all for it, do I table it because one guy didn't like it?

Edit: I do have all their contact info, so this is a legitimate option.

Personally I wouldn't call individuals but I'd start an email chain (or private Facebook group) with the proposed general itinerary and see if anyone objected (or had a great idea/knew a nice option in Tahoe). Gives them a chance if they are strongly opposed, but puts the onus on them to convince the group instead of forcing you to make an executive decision. And at the end of the day, like you said, your responsibility is to make sure your brother has a great time, and these people *should be* thinking that way too.

[CrimsonFox]

really "going to party in a nice rented place " sounds like fun to anyone. I'm sure they'll be happy with everything. set the thing like you said have a couple dvds set up. mae get pizza there too (no telling how long that will be after the actual dinner)

the place will probably be great to hang out at no matter what. Have tunes ready. Keep it as simple as possible yet have a lot of options. Also call the hotel and get THEIR advice of cool places to go so splinter group has options. heck if uyou are having drinking at the hotel why do you need to go to a bar?