Why I Decided Not to Have a Bachelorette Party

Whenever I get engaged, I've already decided I'm not having a bachelorette.

It's not because I don't love my friends, and it's not because I think bachelorettes are silly. There was a stretch of time where I genuinely thought I wanted one. I was planning it in my head, thinking through where we'd go and what we'd do.

What changed my mind was thinking about it from my friends' side of the ledger instead of mine. Most of them don't live in Pittsburgh. They're spread out all over. That means if I get married, they're already booking a flight, taking time off work, paying for a hotel, and probably buying a gift. Adding a second trip on top of that started to feel like a lot to ask of people whose only crime was loving me.

Here's the part that really got me. If you're expecting people to travel for your wedding and travel for a bachelorette, that can easily add up to thousands of dollars per person.

Put that against a salary and it gets uncomfortable fast. If someone makes $100k a year, thousands of dollars is roughly four to five percent of their yearly salary — pre-tax — just to attend all of my wedding events. And most people I know aren't making $100k. So the percentage only goes up from there.

I'm not saying anyone who has a destination bachelorette is doing something wrong. I'm saying I personally would never feel comfortable asking people to hand over that slice of their year for me. That's my line, and once I did the math I couldn't unsee it.

Before I landed on not having one at all, my plan looked like this: because my friends are scattered, I'd rent an Airbnb in Nashville for a weekend. Whoever wanted to come could come. They'd book their own flights, but I'd cover the house.

That framing mattered to me. I was always planning my own bachelorette as if the financial responsibility for the trip sat with me, the bride — not with my friends and not with a maid of honor. If I'm the reason everyone is getting on a plane, I didn't want the bill for the lodging landing on them too.

It was a nice idea. I still think it was a kinder version than most. But even that version meant asking people to buy a second flight for a second event in the same year, and that's ultimately what I couldn't get past.

There's a second reason, and honestly it's just as big for me.

It was never really on the table for me to hand someone else the job of planning an entire trip in my honor. Choosing the place, wrangling everyone's schedules, collecting money from people, dealing with whoever can't make the dates — that is real work, and it usually falls on one or two friends who then also have to show up for the wedding itself.

I'd never make someone plan a whole trip for me. That's just not a thing I want to ask for.

I can only speak for my own situation, and mine has a specific shape: friends in a lot of different cities, a wedding people would already be flying to. If everyone you love lives twenty minutes away, none of this math applies to you the same way.

If you're sitting with the same decision, these are the questions that actually moved the needle for me:

• How many separate trips am I asking one person to take for me in a single year?
• Who is paying for what, and have I said that out loud instead of letting people guess?
• Who is doing the planning labor, and did they volunteer or get volunteered?
• Is there a version of this that doesn't require a plane ticket at all?

For me, the honest answer was that the whole thing has gotten a little out of control — multiple events, multiple flights, multiple hotels, all stacked onto one wedding. I'd rather my wedding be the thing that brings people together than the reason someone quietly stresses about their bank account for six months.

I still want to celebrate. I just don't need it to cost the people I love a percentage of their salary.