The first bachelorette I ever ran, I forgot to book the brunch. Not the house, not the flights, the brunch. Sunday morning, eight hungover women, and me on the porch calling places at 9am asking if a party of eight could just show up. We waited fifty minutes. Two of them cried, and not the good kind.
That is the thing about these weekends. They look like a Pinterest board and they run like a small wedding, except nobody appointed a planner and everyone assumes someone else did the math. I have been that someone else twice now. Once badly, once okay. The difference was a checklist I taped inside a folder and a couple of printables I stopped trying to design from scratch at midnight.
So below is what I keep coming back to when a friend texts me “I think I’m the maid of honor??” with three question marks. A few of these links are affiliate links, so if you grab one it kicks a little back to me. Doesn’t change your price.
Quick note, a couple of these are affiliate links. If one ends up at your reception, it helps keep this little blog running and you pay the same.
Games that fill the awkward first hour
The worst part of any bachelorette is the first hour, when half the group has never met and everyone is holding a drink they don’t want yet. This pack is what I print to skip past that. I ran two of the cards before the bride even arrived and by the time she walked in people were already arguing about her order at Starbucks.
I printed mine on regular paper at a UPS Store off Grand, four to a page to save sheets, then cut them down with a paper trimmer my neighbor lent me. Held up fine through spilled prosecco and a pool.
One thing. A couple of the prompts assume everyone has known the bride for years, so if you’ve got coworkers in the mix, pull those cards out first or you’ll watch someone bluff an answer about her high school boyfriend.
The folder that kept me from forgetting brunch again
After the brunch disaster I refused to run another one out of my head. This planner is the spine of the whole weekend for me now. Budget pages, a guest list with who paid what, a packing section, the boring stuff that actually saves the trip.
I filled mine in on the laptop, printed only the pages I needed, and clipped them into a cheap two-dollar folder so I wasn’t scrolling a phone with 6% battery in an Airbnb with no chargers. The contributions page alone ended three separate Venmo arguments before they started.
My gripe is the budget page rounds to whole dollars, so if you’re splitting a $313 house seven ways it gets weird at the end. I just penciled the cents in the margin and moved on.
For the group that is past the cutesy stuff
Some brides want bows and some want the version you’d never print at the office. This set is the second one. I brought it out late, after dinner, once the quiet cousin had loosened up, and that was the right call. Earlier it would have flopped.
I did these on cardstock at home, 110lb, because cheap paper feels flimsy when you’re passing cards around a table and people are reading them out loud. The heavier weight just lands better in the hand.
Fair warning, a few of these are genuinely raunchy, so read them yourself before you hand the stack to the bride’s very sweet aunt who came along. Ask me how I know.
Matching shirts without the screen-print quote
Everyone wants the matching tops and nobody wants the $22-a-shirt quote from the local print shop. This is the design I used to do it myself. Iron-on transfer paper, a flat shirt, and a hot iron is the whole operation.
I ordered blank tank tops, pressed the transfers at my kitchen table the Wednesday before we flew out, and burned one corner of the towel doing it. The shirts came out clean though. Eight matching tanks for under thirty bucks total.
The catch with any PNG like this is sizing. I printed the first one too big and it looked like a billboard across one friend’s chest, so do a paper test and hold it to the shirt before you commit a transfer sheet to it.
One page so nobody texts you “wait where are we going”
By the second day of any trip, the questions start. What time is dinner, are we driving, do I need cash. I answer all of it once now, on paper, and tape it to the fridge in the rental. This itinerary template is what I fill in.
I typed ours up, printed a copy for each room, and folded one into every welcome bag. People stopped asking me things by hour two. Worth the printer ink alone.
My one nitpick is the time column is narrow, so “10:30 – 11:15 spa” gets cramped on the page. I shortened my entries to just the place name and it was fine.
The little graphics that make cheap decor look on purpose
You don’t need a theme so much as you need three things that match. These graphics are how I fake a put-together look on a dollar-store budget. Cups, a banner, the bathroom mirror, all pulled from the same set so it reads intentional.
I cut a few as vinyl decals for tumblers and printed the rest as stickers on a sheet from the craft store on 5th. Slapped them on plain white cups and suddenly it looked like I’d planned the palette. I had not.
What tripped me up was the file count. There are a lot of designs in here and I wasted ten minutes hunting for the one I’d seen in the preview, so name your downloads as you go or you’ll be scrolling thumbnails at 1am like I was.
If she’s a leopard-print bride, lean all the way in
I have a friend whose entire personality is leopard print, and for her weekend half-measures would have been an insult. This set commits. Banner, cups, signs, the whole loud thing, and it all matches, which is the part you’d otherwise spend a Saturday hunting for.
I printed the signs at a copy shop because anything with that much dark pattern streaks on my home printer, and I had them done on the heavier cardstock so the welcome sign wouldn’t curl on the easel. It did not fall off. Small victory after my own wedding sign hit the floor mid-ceremony.
One honest note, leopard reads darker in print than on screen, so the first proof came back almost muddy. I bumped the brightness a touch before the full run and it looked right.
Questions Brides Ask Me
How far ahead do you plan a bachelorette?
Honestly? Earlier than feels normal. I send the first “hold this weekend” text three to four months out, because the second you involve flights and time-off requests you’ve already lost two people who waited too long.
The trip I planned in six weeks technically happened, but I paid airline prices that still make me wince and one bridesmaid couldn’t get the Friday off. Give yourself the runway.
Who pays for what?
The rule I’ve landed on after a couple of awkward ones: the group splits the bride’s share, and everyone covers their own everything else. So her house bed, her dinner, her cover charge gets divided among the rest of you. Her bar tab on night two is still hers, let’s be real.
Say it out loud before anyone books a thing. I wrote it on the contributions page of the planner above and it killed the silent resentment before it could grow. A friend asked me this last spring and I basically just sent her a screenshot of that page.
What do I actually need to print?
Less than the boards make you think. For me it’s three things every time. An itinerary so I stop being the human group chat, a couple of game sheets for the slow first hour, and one banner or sign so a plain rental looks like somebody decorated.
Everything else is nice and skippable. I printed welcome bag tags once and not one person noticed them. Lesson learned, I stick to the three now.
Before You Hit Print
None of this makes you a planner, and you don’t need to be one. You need a folder, a printer that mostly cooperates, and the willingness to call eight brunch spots at 9am if it comes to that. It came to that for me. Don’t let it come to that for you.
Pick a couple of the printables above, run a test page on plain paper first like I always do, and book the brunch before anything else. The bride will not remember the banner. She will remember if there was somewhere to eat eggs on Sunday.