If you’ve been following along with my Wedding Wednesday series, then you know by now that I am getting married this summer in Italy. If not, then now you do! Italy is quite a big destination, so when it came time to plan my bachelorette party, this was at the forefront of my mind. In the future, I’ll be sharing my tips for planning your own bach bash (now that I have perspective from both the bride and the bride’s squad point of view to share), but today, I’m going to be recapping my own bachelorette weekend.
After finding a date that worked for allllmost everyone, we chose a location (stay tuned on the easiest way to do this for a big group). I already have quite a few friends attending my wedding, so I did not want everyone to have to fly anywhere else and have to pay to stay somewhere. To make it easy and affordable, I chose my hometown and city where I currently reside, Dallas. I love Dallas and think it has so many wonderful restaurants and things to do, so I thought it would be so fun to have my friends come here for the weekend! Everyone could stay for free and with the exception of one girlfriend, everyone was within driving distance.
I’ve been on a lottt of bachelorette trips over the years, and when planning mine, I recalled one common theme from almost each of them. There is often one or two people who have “too” much fun the first night and don’t make it out and about in time (or at least on their A-game) for the daytime festivities on day two. I wanted to ensure that we had one solid day of fun with everyone ready-to-go. I also recognize that as my friends and I are almost all quickly approaching, or have already turned, the big 3-0. We don’t quite hang alllll weekend like we used to. My ideal Friday is usually dinner, wine, relaxing, and a decently early bed time. Because of this, I wanted a really relaxed Friday night. I didn’t want my friends of town to have to rush to get in to town and worry about taking off of work, so I deemed Friday night a pizza and pajama night. Those that came over hung out at my apartment, ate allll of my favorite junk food, drank wine, and played games.
Saturday morning we woke up, popped some champagne and went to Dry Bar to get pampered bright and early. Shoutout to One Hope for the amazing glitter champagne bottles and recluse apparel for the perfect robe! It says ‘Champagne for Breakfast.’ (More on both of those, soon.) I’m such a big fan of anything Dry Bar and I thought it would be the perfect way to kick off the festivities. They made us all feel oh so special and it was such a fun thing to do in the morning as a group! I use their dry shampoo every other day and I really think I skip washes just so my hair can smell like it longer.
Shop my casual Dry Bar look:
From Dry Bar, we changed and headed to brunch at one of the most beautiful spots, Grange Hall. Grange Hall is a hidden gem that somehow not everyone knows about, but should. It’s the most insane store and restaurant that is only open for lunch. Everything in the store is on my wishlist, the florals inside are always insane, and the food is amazing. You can’t find a better ‘ladies who lunch’ type spot in Dallas in my opinion. We had a set menu including my personal favorites: their gorgeous cheese platter and the snob sandwich. You can’t go wrong with either when visiting! We basically split every dessert they have and I’m drooling just thinking about their madeleines.
From brunch and lotttsss of rosé we hopped on over to Happiest Hour. I love their rooftop bar because it’s easy to sit with a big group and it has an awesome view of downtown. We spent a few hours here between Moscow mules (my fav!), jalepeño cocktails, and some sort of fish bowl concoction with gummy bears in it.
SHOP MY DAYTIME LOOK:
Shoutout to Stone Cold Fox for this to-die-for jumpsuit which is basically what my day-time bachelorette outfit dreams were made of. I didn’t want to wear your standard all white, so this was perfect. The Spring SCF line is actually inspired by Italy and this specific print is inspired by Italian tiles. It was just meant to be! I was obsessed with the back of the jumpsuit and the flared legs. It also comes in a super fun black pattern, which is linked above. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for the white to become available on more sites, but its on their site for now!
After Happiest Hour we freshened up and changed for the evening, then went over to my future sister-in-law’s place for a lingerie shower and champagne before dinner. We played a few games during this time that carried on throughout dinner (stay tuned for my favs to play, coming soon), which we had at Bistro 31 in Highland Park Village. HPVillage is one must-visit spot in Dallas. It’s so charming and was the first self-contained shopping center in the United States. It’s filled with adorable and delicious spots, with Bistro being one of the best in my opinion. After sufficient carb loading, we went to one of my favorite places to dance- Truth and Alibi aka The Deep Ellum Candy Company. From the outside, it looks like a candy shop, but after giving the correct password, you enter a speakeasy type club. They always have a great DJ and I always have so much fun there. We got a table for all of us girls to have room to dance all together and ohhh my did we dance. We ended with Whataburger (duh) at my apartment.
SHOP MY NIGHT TIME LOOK:
Again, I didn’t want to wear the traditional all white bachelorette outfit, so this gold two piece outfit was perfect. I saw it months before my bachelorette and had it in my mind ever since. It’s also from Stone Cold Fox and is sold exclusively on their site. Hurry, its been on sale and is almost sold out! There is a gorgeous orange and patterned one that is also available that I’ve linked below. Despite not telling my girlfriends what to wear, several chose all black. Can you ever go wrong? It’s always a good choice for a night out.
The weekend was a reminder that things don’t always go as planned and that is okay. The week leading up, one of my girlfriends had a family emergency to tend to and couldn’t make it. Saturday morning, my two best friends (who are now in-laws) had a family emergency and suddenly had to leave town. In the photo below, I’m missing these three friends who were heavy on my heart all weekend. I’m also missing one who took too long of an afternoon cat nap and one with a lost uber drive, both of who made it shortly after the group photos! I also had one friend who couldn’t attend due to a conflict with a vacation. I’d say getting 14/20 girls together in one photo is quite impressive. I don’t think we ended up getting an entire group shot all weekend with all of us in it. #thestruggleisreal Shoutout to my squad for being the best group of friends a girl could ask for!!
Bachelorette parties are so special, because there really may never be a time when you can look around one room and see all of your groups of best friends coming together to celebrate you. If you’re lucky enough you might if/when you have a baby at a baby shower, but of course, the scene will be very different. Same with your wedding day. It was amazing to see those who met for the first time connecting and having so much fun getting to know each other. Having a very small destination wedding means somewhere like Italy means that I won’t get to celebrate my wedding with a lot of my friends on the day of, so this was such a special weekend to me!
SHOP THE BACHELORETTE favorS:
To say ‘thank you’ to my girlfriends, I gave them each a ‘hangover kit’ that they could keep in their purses for the next day full of all the essentials following a big weekend. These adorable custom bags are c/o Alf & Noop. I am definitely going to be designing some more for either welcome gifts for our wedding or any time I need a little gift bag. They are so versatile and fun for any occasion! I also LOVE these custom champagne labels c/o Label With Love. They were so easy to put on these little mini champagne bottles and make the perfect party favor. They also have them in full size if you prefer a regular bottle over the minis and are available in tons of designs and colors!
XO
