Hen Party Hacks for hen party planners, bridesmaid, brides to be and maid of honour
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Top Tips
for planning a stress free hen party or girls get-way here at
Norfolk House
Good quality hen party houses with hot tubs and large group accommodation get booked up early and we know how hard it is to organise a hen party can be.
Our lead bookers, Hen planners, bridesmaids and maids of honour always express to us their struggle to get the guests to reply to agree on location, activities, and making payments for hen parties and celebration stays.
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What they thought would be an exciting process of planning a wonderful weekend of fun and celebrations becomes a logistical nightmare. 🙇🏻♀️ With this in mind we have designed the template email at the bottom of the page, to help you rally your guests together and to make the planning as stress free as possible.
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We have had a fantastic response from guests using this template. Most recently a hen party group from last week, enquired to book our house in the morning, sent out this email and had collected all the deposits and managed to book the house that evening! This process can often take over a month and hundreds of questions to answer for 16+ Hens.
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I would recommend setting up a
Group Payment method using Collctiv or similar which are a brilliant way to collect money for large groups. You can even make them personal with photos and send via Messager or WhatsApp. Money Collecting Apps are great for keeping track, sending reminders and not having hen money in your bank account. We do require you to make payments to us via the lead booker, so feel free to collect the money as above but make payment to us as one payment.
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I do not advise starting by using a group WhatsApp or similar when planning a hen party, until closer to the date or it will drive everyone nuts and hens may start to ignore it and you will want to throw in the towel!
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Don’t upset your friends and family by been a Henzilla when organising your hen party or celebration weekend check out of tips below for a stress free hen weekend.
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MOTHER HEN Hen weekend TOP TIPS
1. Book Early:
The biggest issue is agreeing on a date that suits everyone. This is why we highly recommend choosing your dates 12-18 months ahead or with as much notice as possible. I strongly advice picking a date that suits the bride, the family and the bridesmaids and then once agreed, put out that date to the others. As long as you give enough notice, everyone else should be able to move things around to make the date work.
DO NOT WhatsApp’s and ask everyone which date suits them, as you will have 16 different dates come back at you.
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My hens often pick a date 6-2 months before the wedding this way the bride isn’t tied up with dress fittings and other wedding related things which mainly happen closer to the wedding date. Also I think it’s great to leave a good gap between the hen and the wedding so you are all excited about seeing each other again and this helps to spread the cost too.
2. Hen Party Dates:
Good quality hen party houses with hot tubs get booked up early so we highly recommend planning your hen party a year in advance.
If you are looking for a good deal Nov-March (hen party low season) are less popular dates and often come in at a cheaper price. Maybe you have left it too late and the dates you wanted have already been booked. Think outside the box and choose a date in Jan or Feb when most people don’t have much in the diary, its lovely to have something to look forward to in those dreary months after Christmas.
Last year we had an increase of hens looking to book weekends between and shortly before and after Christmas and New Year, as some of the party lived overseas and would be home to the UK for Christmas.
May is the most popular month on the calendaras are Bank Holidays and so at a premium price. We find that school holidays are often a great chance to pick up a good deal especially if you have a group of teachers, unlike regular accommodation school holidays are not at a higher price here at Norfolk House. In fact prices start at £180pp for a 2 night midweek stay. If you cant get everyone to agree to two nights why not ask about outfabulous All Inclusive Sundays?
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3. Budgets:
Set a max budget of say £250-350 (in my experience, this more than enough for quality accommodation, activities, travel and food) and send out the original Hen Party Save The Date email to your guest list. Stating this is the max the weekend will cost. DO NOT DO THIS ON WHATSAPP or group chat. For example our house for 16-20 guests is £150-£230pp for 2 nights, life drawing £30pp, afternoon tea £25, train from London £40, £20pp food shop, bottomless brunch in restaurant £25pp
Ideally send out this email about 18-12 months before your planned weekend. Giving time for all guests to put away a little money each week. Don’t forget they’ll be saving for your wedding too and possibly other hen weekends. Some guests get invited to 4+ parties a year and can’t accept all of them so early planning is essential if you want all your favourite BFF to attend.
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4. Numbers:
if you invite 30 guests to your weekend, chances are your finally numbers will be between 16-20, I see this every single week, guests looking for houses for 26 guests and then asking for deposit only to discover they only then have 17 guests, so the house chosen is now too big and expensive.
GET YOUR DEPOSIT OFF EACH GUEST FRIST before you even look for accommodation this will save so much time and heartache.
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5. Deposits:
Ask each guest to pay an initially deposit of £50pp to commit to the weekend and watch the flaky ones who were adamant they would love to attend, drop like fly’s “put your money where your mouth is” springs to mind. All the best luxury accommodation is often booked 12 months in advance for especially for dates between April and Aug.
There’s nothing worse than having your heart set on a unique property perfect for your bridle party, only to find out once you go to pay the deposit your dates has been booked.
Having your £50pp deposits at the ready is a powerful bargaining tool if you are competing with another group for a date. Most holiday homes will except £50+pp as a deposit then hey presto you can book the place of your dreams and you then have months to relax, plan, prepare and save up for the hen party weekend. The relief you will feel once the house is booked will be immense.
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6. Where:
Choosing a hen party house with the ideal location is key, you may be dreaming of a hen do country house in an idilic rural setting in the middle of nowhere, until someone gets lost in the dark trying to find the property and there’s no GPS, no phone signal and the SatNav can’t connect.
Rural settings can be an expensive choice if you need to get taxis to the train station no local shop to restock if you run out of wine/milk and trains running once a day.
The Morden hen party is made up of hens who are scattered countrywide and some even have guests flying in for abroad. We are ideally located 1/2 mile from Huddersfield station, with great road and rail links to our hen party venue.
We are slap bang in the centre of the UK, so if you have friends in the Highlands of Scotland or on the South Coast its equal distance for everyone. We are located between Manchester and Leeds airports and we have a direct trains from London to Brighouse (2 miles) 2.5hrs. Leeds is 20 mins if you do fancy a great night out on the town.
7. Activities
Don’t try to do too many things sometimes less is more. Our hen party Manor House is beautiful and theres no need to leave the house during your home stay. We recommend our perfect itinerary below.
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Friday
Prosecco on arrival
Pizza Delivery
Karaoke, Disco & Games
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Saturday
DIY Breakfast
Life Drawing Class
Afternoon Tea drop off
Hot Tub Time
Chefs Meal
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Sunday
Check out 10am/12pm
Brunch/lunch at The Scullery (10 min walk)
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Get travel insurance (try the post office online) to cover the stay so if something unexpected happens you will have peace of mind from £17
I hope this helps…Happy Planning
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Email Template below (just copy and paste)
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We have found our dream venue for ……….’s hen do party. We are keeping the details secret (the Brides wishes) for now so it will be a wonderful surprise for everyone, but promise this will be the most fantastic celebration weekend. The location is a Georgian Mansion House 🏛in Yorkshire near Leeds with an indoor Hot Tub 🧜🏼♀️ and in-house spa treatment rooms 🧖🏾♀️
The chosen weekend is ../../../ which Im hoping suits the whole group 🙏🏽
The cost of the accommodation is £…..pp for a 2 night stay. The £50pp deposit is due ASAP so we can book the house.
For now I just need the following from you please.
• Your full name
• Confirm you are available for the dates
• Transfer £50pp deposit in to my account ……… /……….by ../../..
• The balance of £…. is due on ../../../ (1st of the month, 3 months before arrival)
• Activities/cost to follow shortly.
We have very worked hard to find the perfect venue for the weekend, its a popular place and is booked up a year in advance. We would be gutted if we miss out due to not having the deposit together in time. We thank you in advance for been fantastic, replying and making payments promptly. Hen/ birthday party planning is stressful but Im hoping this approach makes ours run smoothly and is wonderful pain free affair. 💆🏼♀️ Fingers crossed…🍀
I know you all probably have lots of question to ask about the weekend but if you can trust us to make all the right choices for now and we will let you know everything you need for the perfect weekend in due course.
If we don’t hear from you on receipt of this email we may consider you are not coming so please rsvp asap. 💌
Can not wait to spend the weekend with you lovely lot.
