Who pays for the hen do?

Money is what actually damages friendships around a bachelorette or bachelor party, not the plan. A weekend that arrives with a headline price and then grows by 150 dollars in instalments produces a resentment that outlasts the wedding.

This article sets out the conventions on who pays for what, how the guest of honour's share is handled, how to split costs that are not equal, and the two conversations that are hard: someone who cannot afford it, and someone who has not paid.

Across Britain, Ireland and North America the same rough convention applies, with local variation in how far it extends.

Two clarifications. Covering the guest of honour is a convention rather than an obligation, and on an expensive weekend abroad plenty of groups agree that she pays her own way; that is entirely normal and is best said out loud early. And the organiser is a guest too. Anyone spending twenty hours planning should not also be subsidising it.

The American practice tilts slightly more towards covering the guest of honour fully, including flights, while British groups more often cover the local costs and split the rest. Neither is wrong. What matters is that everyone knows which version is in operation before they say yes.

One figure, all in, before anybody commits. It should include the guest of honour's share, the activity, accommodation, transfers and any group meals that are being paid for centrally.

What it will not include, and what should be stated: personal drinks, personal travel to the meeting point, and anything optional. Say that explicitly, because the gap between the published number and the real spend is where the bad feeling lives.

The amounts in this article are US dollars; the conventions themselves apply equally in Britain and Ireland, where the same structure runs in pounds. A worked example for a ten-person domestic weekend, per head:

• Accommodation, two nights, shared: 200 dollars
• Activity: 85 dollars
• Saturday dinner, prix fixe with gratuity: 75 dollars
• Share of the bride's costs, one tenth of hers: 40 dollars
• Decorations and sundries: 10 dollars
• All-in, published: 410 dollars, plus your own travel and drinks

Sending that list rather than a single number does two useful things. It lets people see what is driving the cost, and it makes it possible for someone to say the dinner is the problem rather than having to decline the whole weekend.

Equal splits are simple and are the right default, but they can be quietly unfair. Four cases come up repeatedly.

1. Rooms. A twin shared by two costs each of them less than a single. Either price by room type and let people choose, or average it across the group and say so.
2. People joining for part of it. Someone coming for the Saturday only pays for the Saturday, plus a proportionate share of the guest of honour's costs. Do not charge them for the Friday night they missed.
3. Drinkers and non-drinkers. A shared bar tab split equally penalises anyone not drinking, and there will always be someone pregnant, driving or teetotal. Separate drinks from the published price entirely.
4. Dinner bills. Splitting an itemised restaurant bill twelve ways at eleven at night is the single most reliable source of friction. Pre-order a set menu at a known price per head, or ask for separate bills when you book.

The general principle is to make the unequal thing visible rather than to bury it in an average. People accept paying different amounts far more easily than they accept discovering that they did.

The organisers worst outcome is holding four unpaid deposits on a personal card. It is avoidable with three rules.

Collect before you book. Not after. A deposit paid from your own account before the money is in is a loan you did not agree to make.

Set a date, in writing, once. Money by the end of the month, activity booked on the first. That is a deadline rather than a reminder, and it means you chase once instead of weekly.

Use something with a visible list. A shared payment app, a group note, anything where people can see their own name. Public visibility does almost all the chasing for you, without a single awkward message.

On refunds, decide the policy before the first payment and state it. The usual and fairest version: if you drop out before anything is booked you get everything back; afterwards you get back whatever is genuinely refundable. Nobody should be personally liable for a friends cancellation.

Keep it separate from wedding money too. The bachelorette party and the bachelor party are the guests' expense; the wedding is the couple's. Mixing the two accounts leads to a conversation neither side wants.

One more thing worth agreeing at the start: who holds the money. A single account with one named person is simpler than four people each paying a different supplier, and it means one bank statement answers every question about where the total went.

Whoever that is should not also be the person paying for the guest of honour out of goodwill. Generosity that nobody sees turns into a grievance about six weeks later, and the fix is simply to put every cost in the published list.

This is the conversation the etiquette guides skip, and it is the one that decides whether a friendship survives the planning.

Assume it is happening. In any group of ten there is usually at least one person for whom 550 dollars is genuinely difficult, and they will almost never say so. What they will say is that the date does not work.

Four things help, and none requires anyone to explain their finances:

• Offer a day rate. Make it explicit that people can join for the Saturday only, and price it. This alone rescues most cases.
• Stage the payments. Three instalments over three months is a different proposition from 550 dollars in one week.
• Publish early. Ten weeks of notice is a budget; two weeks is an ambush.
• Ask the group before committing. Two options with prices, decided by the group, produces a number people can live with. A finished plan produces a bill.

If someone declines, treat it as final and keep them in the conversation. A person who cannot come to the bachelorette party has not withdrawn from the wedding, and there will be a hundred small things they can still be part of, from the group message to whatever the couple are coordinating on their wedding website.