430 million on Stag and Hen parties

For some, marriage is not a word but a sentence. For others it has become a sentence that they find impossible to pronounce without slurring.
Today’s survey by the world’s largest online insurance company calculates that Britons are going to spend £430 million on stag and hen parties abroad this year — an average of £551 per aching head. One in ten will have something stolen. One in five will need medical attention after sports or drunken accidents. One in 20 is likely to be arrested. The statistics are as fascinating as the destinations are diverse. Did Eastern European nations acceding to the EU realise that being a buck’s party paradise was in the deal?

Stag parties for young bucks on the razzle, and (in these days of equal opportunities to binge) hen parties, were originally American terminology. But the practice of bachelors and merry maidens seeing their friends off for their great leap in the dark on a tide of alcohol is older than Sir Toby Belch.

Nor is there anything new in the prudence of insuring for these jaunts. Leave aside Actaeon’s rather unfortunate stag night. The joint stag and hen party for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis ended in discord, when a golden paintball was fired into the party. Out of that celebration came most of Western mythology and literature.

Like marriage itself, stag and hen nights may be nature’s way of keeping people from fighting with strangers. Britons have always had a beastly reputation for drunkenness. Perhaps cynical modern hens and stags can claim that their gaudy nights are merely a preparation for the hurly-burly of modern marriage. More likely, they are just another excuse to drink too much.

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IF I WERE Japanese, where left-handedness in a wife is a suitable reason for divorce, I think I might have taken a somewhat more cavalier attitude to marriage.
As a southpaw, I could have hurled myself into any mismatched union with abandon, hanging around just long enough to host the party, open the gifts and cut the cake, before merrily left-footing it on to the next matrimonial path, and the next big Champagne reception.
As it is, though, my life has been untouched by married bliss. I have never tried on a dress shaped like a dessert, nor danced a spotlit waltz in front of everyone I’ve ever met. The last time a man fell to his knees in my presence it was to search for the jaw he dropped when I told him how much I spent in Harvey Nichols last weekend.

Now I’m not trawling for sympathy here, for this is in no way a mournful state of affairs. None of my friends are married, plenty are still single and, apart from my friend Kate, who has been engaged roughly since the time the motor car was introduced to this country and still hasn’t got round to organising a wedding yet, none of them show any imminent signs of defecting.
I’m quite relieved about this. For years I’ve been listening to colleagues moan about the amount of money they’ve had to shell out in order to attend an old friend’s marital union, but now I see the whole shebang has been taken up a notch. According to a new report, we Brits are planning on spending a whopping £430 million this year on stag and hen parties.

That’s £551 per person which, while admittedly close to the aforementioned figure spent in Harvey Nichols last weekend, seems really rather frivolous for what is - when all is said and done - just one night. Even more amusing to note is that 20 per cent of those attending will apparently lose valuables, and 10 per cent will have their stuff stolen. Possibly by other stag and hen attendees who couldn’t scrape up the cash in time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for a big bash, and the chance to celebrate your happiness with your nearest and dearest. But the amount of days, nights and weekends attached to a simple hitching nowadays seems somewhat preposterous.
Who on earth needs a wedding breakfast, for example? Or a pre-ceremony dinner? What can you possibly do there that you can’t do on the day, apart from eat too much smoked salmon?
Anyway, why should a wedding be celebrated so much more than a new job, for example, or significant weight loss?
Both are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, and if the statistics are to be believed, will probably last longer too.

My wedding, if I have one, will not be a quiet affair, but it will be a "one day only" affair. I will solemnly promise not to take valuables from my guests, nor demand they shell out £600 for a weekend in Prague where everyone will get so drunk they will board the wrong plane home and end up in Wokingham.
In fact, all I ask is that they turn up, preferably having combed their hair first. And - unless they’re planning a similar do - that they leave me off their own wedding guest list. That’s not too much to ask, now is it?