Our lovely bride to be Claire announced to us all last month that she has a bun in the oven so with this in mind she needed to have a bump friendly hen party! She decided to break the rules and go somewhere where no hen’s are allowed… here she is to tell us all about it!
No boys allowed…
So cwtchers, we’ve got to that point in the wedding planning when the hen party has come around! The countdown to the C&C wedding really is now on! A bit like wedding choices, I think that hen parties are a huge personal choice and each bride to be will have entirely different views on what they want and expect from their hen party. For me, even before baby Double L had been in the picture, I wasn’t entirely convinced that I wanted the whole ‘go away for the weekend, drink as much as you can with a stripper thrown in for good measure” type of party. For one, I knew that I wanted my mother to come on the hen weekend and, as game for a laugh as she is, I just couldn’t picture her enduring a weekend of alcohol induced craziness! Also, I just wanted a weekend when I got to spend time having a laugh and a giggle with girl friends who mean the most to me… In the case of my best girls and me, any sign of a stripper would leave us running for the hills! So, on my hen weekend, the closest we got to a stripper was this virtual beauty…
My sister got married just under two years ago and her hen weekend was in Center Parcs… Sorry Center Parcs, I know the smallprint says “no hen parties” but we broke the rules! It was a brilliant weekend and was everything I wanted my own hen party to be so after much weighing up of other options, I decided that we would be rule breakers again and get booking to return to what most people would probably view as an unconventional hen party destination… Center Parcs Longleat Forest was going to be hit up by one hen and her ten chicks!
My hen weekend was originally booked for a weekend in the middle of May but, with Baby Double L due to make an appearance on June the 3rd, I was gently persuaded by my friends who had children of their own to move the weekend forward as I would probably not be feeling completely up to getting in the swing of the party mood at 37ish weeks pregnant! So, upon much deliberation on dates, we decided that the weekend would be moved forward to coincide with my birthday weekend… Double celebrations!
We arrived at Center Parcs on a Friday, I was presented by my girls with a bag of goodies in a “bride to be” bag which consisted of, amongst other things, a “willy whistle,” pink feather boa, veil and bride to be glasses… Obviously, all these have to be worn at the same time for maximum Elton John esque effect!
In the comfort of our own lodge, we ordered a takeaway and played some hen party games which involved a “Mr and Mrs” quiz and also a “stick the junk on the hunk” game! As I couldn’t down any shots as forfeits, my lovely sister had dreamed up the idea of making me eat food that I absolutely hated in their place – cue cold rice pudding from a tin… Eeeeeewwwwww!
Saturday coincided with the last Wales six nations game against Italy so we ventured out to the sports bar and plonked our bums on some sofas to watch the game.
This was followed by an outing on the boating lake in a katakanu… I don’t think Center Parcs had seen anything quite like ours before! Six girls, one who’s pregnant and two wearing fur coats with life jackets over the top, attempting, badly, to co-ordinate a six person pedalo around the lake!
We topped off Saturday night with a meal and some more games then spent Sunday morning in the Pancake House followed by a trip to the sub-tropical dome, where we spent most of our time gossiping in the outdoor Jacuzzi. For good measure, just in case we hadn’t consumed our own body weights in food over the weekend, we finished off Sunday night with a pizza… By this point, I was officially in a food coma and was just about able to string a sentence together!
My hen weekend might not have been the wildest in history but it was everything I wanted… a lovely weekend with my mother, sister, best girls and girlfriends and, in view of “my condition,” it’s probably best that I decided on Center Parcs after all… a pregnant hen, dancing on tables in Ibiza, stone cold sober is not a good look!
You’ll know by now from my previous posts that I am a huge believer in gut instinct and sticking to my guns – My advice to any bride to be’s weighing up their options on a hen weekend would be, follow your instinct and do exactly what you want to do – it’s your hen weekend and you have to do what makes you happy and what you’ll actually enjoy – keep that in the back of your mind and you won’t go wrong!
As a final note, I just want to say a huge thanks to my sister for organising my hen whilst heavily pregnant herself and then putting the final touches on it with a newborn baby to contend with… She’s a superwoman! Huge thanks to all my chicks too for a lovely weekend… Bring on the C&C wedding!!!
