A review

IT used to be just a few pints down at the local pub the night before the wedding. But these days, hen nights and stag dos are far more extravagant affairs, often lasting days, in different countries or cities.

So it’s unsurprising the average cost of prenuptial celebrations now stands at a massive £551 per person, as revealed in recent research by Egg.

The growing cost is being blamed on people waiting longer until they get married, making them and their friends more likely to have higher salaries to spend on more expensive celebrations.

Here four people reveal what they spent on nights out over the past few weeks in Edinburgh, elsewhere in Scotland, and abroad.

EDINBURGH
SEVEN giggling girls are cruising around Edinburgh in a pink stretch limo on a Saturday afternoon sipping champagne as they serenade a semi-naked man.

It can mean only one thing - marriage.

Francesca Mitchell has flown up to the Scottish capital from London for her hen weekend.

The 25-year-old healthcare assistant, who lives in Barnet, north London, arrived in Edinburgh on Friday for a three-day celebration.

The stretch limo with karaoke and bar was one of the highlights of the weekend for Francesca and her six friends.

But it was pink ladies of a different kind which really ramped up the bill - with cocktails and numerous other drinks making up the bulk of the girls’ spending spree.

Francesca is not surprised by what she spent over the weekend, saying: "I knew it would cost roughly that much and I had budgeted for it.

"We got the flights really cheaply because we booked early. Most of the money went on food and drink, mainly drink!

"The limo was brilliant, it had karaoke and everything. We had a really great time."

After flying home to London, Francesca is now getting ready to jet off for her wedding next month - on a beach in Florida.

Travel £45
Accommodation £113
Food and drink £300
Clothes £100
Activities/extras £16
Francesca’s total: £574

GLASGOW
INDIAN dancing might sound quite exotic. But West Lothian business centre advisor Maggie Mollon only had to venture a few miles from home for her sister’s hen night.

The venue was Ashoka Shak in Glasgow where Maggie and the rest of the 20-strong group spent the night competing against other hen parties in contests such as limbo-ing, Indian dancing, karaoke and the more Scottish sport of drinking.

Staying in Britain slashed the cost of the celebrations, with no flights to pay. Being in a big group also helped keep spending low.

Going out in Glasgow also meant that she was close to home, so there was no hotel bill.

Maggie, who works for Intelligent Finance in Livingston, is single, and lives in Shotts, north Lanarkshire. She says she expected the night earlier this month to be more expensive, adding: "I was quite surprised by how little we spent on drink, but we were constantly up dancing, doing karaoke, limbo dancing . . .

"There were a lot of other hen nights there. It is extremely cheesy but brilliant at the same time."

Her sister, Kate Murphy, 40, who also lives in Shotts, is due to get married in Whitburn next month.

Travel £13
Food £16
Drink £60
Clothes £130
Activities/extras £2.50
Maggie’s total £221.50

AMSTERDAM
A STAG night in Amsterdam involving nine kilt-clad men aged 25 to 35 was always likely to cost a lot in cash and casualties.

So to keep the budget as low as possible, best man Christopher Stones booked flights eight months before the big event.

It paid off for the 31-year-old Edinburgh IT worker, who paid £65 for his air fare - almost half the price quoted to some stag party wannabes.

Other cost-cutting measures had their drawbacks though.

The stag, Christopher’s younger brother Martin, 27, and the rest of the group bought very early-morning flights to Amsterdam from Leeds, where Martin lives, leaving them flagging slightly on the first day.

The price of a pint in the Dam was also higher than the party had expected, so in the true spirit of the occasion the lads decided to forego food and spend almost every euro they had on beer.

Christopher, who works for HBoS and lives in Dalgety Bay, Fife, says:

"Only three out of nine of us made it into work on the Monday. No-one ended up in jail though, we all got home again and it was a really good laugh, which was the plan."

He adds: "I’m not surprised by how much I spent. We paid for the flights and hotels up front so it was not so bad on the weekend itself."

The stag weekend took place last month, giving the group plenty of time to recover for Christopher’s brother’s wedding, which is due to take place in St Andrews on Saturday.

Travel £95
Accommodation £75
Food £15
Drink £150
Clothes £40
Christopher’s total £375

GALWAY
IT’S not just cigarettes which are forbidden in Irish pubs these days. Bunny outfits are banned too, in Galway at least, because they encourage men to "behave badly".

But that didn’t stop Edinburgh financial team leader Vanessa Testa having a blast - and spending a small fortune - on her best friend’s hen night in the Irish city last weekend.

She says: "We had bought bunny ears and bunny tails but the pubs wouldn’t let us in unless we took them off.

"We were quite disappointed because we had gone to all the hassle of getting them. But it didn’t really dampen our spirits. We arrived on Friday and went straight out for a meal and drinks.

"On the Saturday it was raining so we went on a bus tour and then we went for lunch, and that’s when the drinking started again."

Vanessa, of Leith, who is single and works for Intelligent Finance, splashed out some £130 on new outfits and make-up for the hen weekend.

Of the bill, she says: "It was really good but I certainly didn’t expect to spend that much in two days."

Hen Annette Helberg, 34, who also lives in Edinburgh, is getting married at Lennoxlove, near Haddington, next month when Vanessa will be her bridesmaid.

Travel £135
Accommodation £56
Food £80
Drink £140
Clothes £130
Activities/Extras £32
Vanessa’s total £573

'We decided to handcuff the groom to a sheep'

LINDA WRIGHT, 26, bank manager, from Holyrood

Linda ditched her formal suit for a high-octane hen night in Newcastle last weekend.

The 19-strong group donned identical aqua blue outfits, with the bride adding flashing men’s plastic genitals. The evening began with a Chinese banquet then it was on to the infamous Buffalo Joe’s where the bride ended up in cage with a pair of cowboys.

JO HENDERSON, 25, PR executive, from Merchiston

"When my friend Lindsay was getting married two years ago, we chose to have a relaxed, low-key hen night," says Jo.

"We rented cottages by Loch Lomond and 30 of us spent the weekend chilling out, pampering ourselves, getting glammed up, going out for meals and going clubbing."

KRIS YULE, 30, advertising executive, from Newhaven

Kris attended a friend’s stag party in the Borders where Elvis was the theme - and the dress code.

The group, all keen skydivers, stayed in one of The Borders Parachute Club’s cabins.

Kris says: "After several tequilas we decided to shave half of the groom’s body hair, drive him into a field and handcuff him to a sheep."

JACQUELINE COOPER, 23, advertising executive, from Dunfermline

"We were at a local pub in Paisley for my sister-in-law’s hen night. We had a stripper and he’d been putting on baby oil - and I slipped on it.

"Everyone just laughed - I put on a bandage on it and we just carried on. But I had actually broken my arm."

COLIN GALLACHER, 29, IT worker, from Livingston

"We went down to Newcastle for my friend Peter Marshall’s stag weekend a couple of years ago. We made him wear a purple thong all weekend.

"On the way back, we stripped him down to his thong and wrote on his back in permanent marker: ‘Thanks for last night, you were the best I’ve ever had’. Then we dumped him on the A1 . . ."

What's Next? Parties in the Baltics

Bachelor Parties in Prague

A little over a decade ago, young Britons grew tired of toasting grooms- and brides-to-be in a local pub, and began organizing wilder celebrations out of town. 'The guys would go to Nottingham, and the girls would go to Brighton,' said Darren Lancaster, a manager of RedSeven Leisure, a British company that caters to so-called stag and hen parties.
Affordable flights arrived in the 1990's, and those roaming, rowdy, weekend-long parties moved to Dublin, Barcelona and Prague. After a few years of tolerating British visitors with a seemingly limitless capacity for alcohol - and the antisocial behavior that typically accompanies it - many bars in those cities have banned stag parties altogether.
Boozing in the Baltics

The latest destinations on the stag party map are cities like Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn - the respective capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which all joined the European Union last year - because low-cost airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet have started flying there direct from London. And more importantly, at less than a pound a pint, beer is cheap.
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is now the third most popular destination for RedSeven, which sends stag parties to 50 locations. 'It's very much what Prague was 10 years ago,' Mr. Lancaster said.

That's not such welcome news locally. The Baltic Times, an English-language newspaper based in Riga, reported in November on 'the widespread fear that, once a low-fare airline opens a route into an Eastern or Central European city, British stag parties will help turn the place into a nightmare.'

The largest companies that organize stag party trips claim to avoid typical "lager lout" behavior by planning daytime activities that delay the start of each day's drinking until at least lunchtime. The former occupiers of former Soviet states left behind some serious toys for boys to play with, like shooting ranges stocked with Red Army firearms.

Those Baltic cities offer medieval charm and centuries of history. But another attraction carries more weight with stag party clientele. "Wherever you look, there's a stunning woman," said Phil Teubler, managing director of Baltic Holidays. "The guys go out there and they absolutely cannot believe it. It's like a dream."

Mr. Lancaster says women in the Baltics may have been curious about British tourists a few years ago, when they were fairly rare. But, he said, that's changed. "They'll tolerate them; they'll speak to them and chat to them," he said, "but that's it."

UK's First gay wedding fayre attracts weekend operators

The wedding fayre, which will be held in Edinburgh this November, is touring the UK ahead of the Civil Partnership Act, which comes into effect in December.


"The event, which will take place in the capital's Assembly Halls on November 13, is expected to attract around 50 exhibitors. Among the services that will be offered are specialist gay stag and hen parties, honeymoon packages and a 'Pink City', where couples wanting to tie the knot can plan their finances and get information on legal matters."

Martin Freeman - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy star prefers antiques roadshow to stag party?

In this interview Martin Freeman reveals: "I've got a stag weekend coming up and I've said I'm not doing anything more than a few drinks. I won't have it. I'll go home and watch Antiques Roadshow.' "

York has stag and hen problems

The tough stance on licensing regulations has been imposed by York Council in an attempt to counter the problems of binge drinking which has blighted the Micklegate area of the city.

The infamous Micklegate Run has been etched into the history of York's nightlife, with the numerous pubs and bars providing a huge draw for stag and hen parties.

While there has been a succession of other pubs opening elsewhere in York in recent years, the Micklegate area has seen an ongoing problem with violence and anti-social behaviour linked to alcohol.

Hen Mania

WATCH out Magaluf - hen mania is heading your way!

A gaggle of 48 women are jetting off to the Spanish resort on Friday for what could well be the biggest hen party ever organised in Wales.
When Rachel Ham, 26, decided to tie the knot with childhood sweetheart Damian Walsh, 28, she naturally wanted her friends to help her celebrate.
But with seven best friends she's known since the age of four, 15 pals from South Wales Police, where she is a CID sergeant, and various other friends and relatives joining her, the tally has spiralled.

Lifelong friend Joanne Churcher, who lives a few doors away from Rachel in Cedar Grove, Fairwater, Cardiff, said: 'It has been a massive headache organising it but it will be worth it and we are going to have a brilliant time. We were originally going to go to Prague, but when the boys said they were going to Magaluf for the stag do, we thought we'd go there two weeks before them!'

The girls are flying from Cardiff International Airport on Friday morning and returning on Monday.
Friend Lucy Sullivan added: 'Eight of us in the party met at Holy Family Primary School when we were four and have been best friends ever since. Most of us live in Fairwater and are always popping round to each others' houses.
'We have been through everything together and now Rachel is the first one of the gang to get married.'

Rachel and Damian are due to be married on May 28 at St Mary's Church in Canton, followed by a reception at Cardiff's Thistle Hotel.