I’m sick of stag and hen dos costing a bomb

So many of us go along with staggeringly priced hen and stag dos that we simply can’t afford, purely to avoid looking like a crap friend or, god forbid, skint. Ellie Harrison asks how we got here

Hen parties can be heaven... or hell (Getty Images)

When I turned 30, lots of people had cute nuggets of wisdom they wanted to share with me. They told me that anxiety isn’t really a thing in your thirties, and that you develop a proper sense of self. A lie. They told me that your body gets its revenge for everything you subjected it to in your twenties, while your metabolism runs off, laughing, into the sunset. A truth. What they omitted to tell me, unfortunately, is that I was entering a decade of hen do hell.

Believe it or not, it is actually possible in 2025 to organise a hen or stag (or sten, or hag) that is not demented or bank-breaking. I’m currently in a WhatsApp group called “Hen Hen Hen” and, despite the panic-inducing name, its contents are almost completely sane. A group of us are organising a weekend away ahead of our best friend’s wedding, crucially in the country we all live in, which will not cost a bomb and to which we will bring home-made fun, the details of which I cannot disclose here for fear of spoiling the surprise for the bride-to-be. I can say that there’ll be karaoke because, well, of course there’ll be karaoke.

But I have lost count of the wild stories I’ve heard from traumatised friends who’ve shelled out many hundreds of pounds on hen and stag dos, often abroad, that the participants can neither afford nor genuinely want to go on. Research from Aviva has showed that people attending someone else’s stag or hen do typically face paying £779 in the UK or £1,208 if they go abroad – a staggering sum that many of us go along with purely to avoid looking like a crap friend or, god forbid, skint.

One friend of mine trembled as she told me she’d spent £650 on flights, taxis and accommodation before she’d even arrived in Tuscany for a five-day hen. She also knew that, once they got there, they’d face numerous other expenses, including cocktail ingredients, fancy meals out and “picky bits for by the pool”. On their second night, the bride-to-be ended up storming off in a huff because she was disappointed that everyone was going to bed “too early”.

Another person I know has been waking up in the night with searing pangs of guilt after opting out of his own brother-in-law’s stag – because it was going to cost almost a grand for just under 36 hours in Latvia, where the attendees would be ferried from paintballing to beer-biking to bubble football, all organised by companies whose specialism is ripping off big groups. Hardly any of the guys going even knew each other beyond meeting at the odd birthday of their mutual friend; suddenly they were waking up to each others’ lager burps in a shared bed.

Beyond this, it’s not uncommon for people to have several dos – a home hen, an away hen, a family hen, a sten/hag. Soon, our holiday budget – and annual leave – for the entire year is gone, spent on destinations and activities we largely didn’t even have a say on. And there are endless Reddit posts where people recount hen and stag dos where half the party has dropped out because of ever-spiralling costs. “Have people lost their minds?” asked one poster. “I’ve never experienced such a disregard for budget and feel awful for the bride, who will have a poor turnout.”

Hen girlies typically face paying £779 in the UK or £1,208 if they go abroad (Getty)

Their concern for the bride-to-be encapsulates the glaring problem with the tyranny of modern hen and stag dos: who are they actually for? Is this whole charade really what the person getting married wants – for all their best mates and extended family members to end up approaching the big day feeling completely broke and resentful towards their loved one, or to alternatively miss out entirely? Is it actually what the best man or maid of honour wants for themselves, or are they simply responding to increasing pressure to arrange the “best stag/hen do EVER!”? Each time a new engagement is announced, the bar is raised, and every party is more elaborate than the last.

On the pints: men tend to spend more on stags than women do on hens, research has found (Getty/iStock)

The fact that pay disparities soar within friendship groups when we enter our thirties only compounds the issue. In our twenties, lots of us would have been on similar starting salaries and experiencing the same challenges trying to make them stretch to cover rent in mouldy digs, pints at the weekends and a new winter coat if it was really, desperately needed. But by the time the wedding invites start stacking up, the difference in pay cheques between someone a decade into a career in law and someone grinding away in hospitality can be in the tens of thousands of pounds a year. Going on a hen or stag do is like the ultimate awkward splitting-the-bill-at-a-restaurant moment. For the high earner, they’re spending their cash on a lovely treat that makes all the work worth it; for the low earner, they might be making a financial decision that will plunge them into debt or mean they can’t go out and socialise for the rest of the month.

You can’t put a price on friendship, but something needs to change

I’m not even going to get into the politics of hen and stag do activities here – disagreements about whether everyone should be dragged to strip clubs or made to run around town centres dressed as giant knobs – because that’s a whole other piece.

But, from where I’m standing, it shouldn’t be this complicated. We are all consistently complaining to each other about how ridiculous hen and stag dos are becoming. We all bitch about ones we’ve been forced to fork out on, vowing “never again”. Then, one day, it falls to us to organise one and, in order to keep up with all that’s gone before, we unleash fresh hell on those very same friends we had previously confided in. And the hellish cycle continues – before anyone even contemplates the costs of attending the actual wedding itself.

Sure, you can’t put a price on friendship, but something needs to change. So I’m going to lay out a set of pledges: I solemnly promise not to bankrupt all my friends. I promise to always have the bride or groom’s best interests in mind. I promise to really think about whether a trip longer than 48 hours or overseas is strictly necessary. Now, how’s that for a set of vows?