Planning your Camp-themed Hens Party
Your school camp and girl scout days don't have to stay in the past - with a camp-themed bachelorette, you can enjoy all the adrenaline, the late-night bunk chats and smores without the pesky teachers and anyone dobbing you into your parents.
Welcome to my guide on planning the very best Camp themed Bachelorette party.
Our Camp Emma uniforms.
Plan in advance.
If you'd like a weekend filled with activities, home-cooked meals and some time to relax, you can only have it with thorough planning.
Depending on the complexity of the event, allow yourself a minimum of two months.
Talk to the Bride
If you're the maid of honour or one of the bridesmaids who are planning this as a surprise for the Bride or on behalf of the Bride, you will want to make sure she has the ultimate say on what happens on her special weekend. Brainstorm has some ideas with her about what she would love to do, but most importantly, things she doesn't want to do.
Our Bride, Emma, didn't want to go out clubbing or have any strippers - essential details to know in the early planning stages. You don’t have to give away your plans to her during this stage, just use it as brainstorming time to see what she wants out of her special weekend.
Gather inspiration
TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram reels are great places to start when gathering inspiration for activities, themes, and meal ideas. You can also send the videos you like to the Bride to see what she thinks. Even if most of the event is supposed to be a surprise, don't feel like you're giving it all away by sending her 50 TikToks; after all, you won't be able to execute all 50 ideas, so it's a great way to get an idea of her favourite and least favourite things.
The Camp Emma inspiration board.
Earning our yoga patch.
Each patch correlated to a game or activity that we were doing during the weekend:
Friendship bracelet making
Cocktail Competition
Candle painting
Morning yoga
Boat cruise on the river
Smore making
Special patches for the Bride
My Cricut machine helped me make all of the creative elements for the event, but you don't necessarily need one to do the same. Etsy sellers sell precut iron on decals that you can customise, purchase and iron onto your projects yourself.
The t-shirts were from Kmart, and the tote bags were from Spotlight. I used my Cricut to cut out the Camp Emma logo and iron it onto the shirts.
I used a tablecloth from Spotlight for the sashes, cut it into strips, and hot-glued down the fraying edges. Buying a tablecloth was much more cost-effective than buying the same fabric by the metre.
The Guest List
The Bride should decide on the guest list, not you. Ensure you chat with her to learn who she would like there. The number of guests will significantly impact your budget, so it is essential to get this locked in before you start booking anything. If you plan on booking accommodation, the more people you have, the cheaper it will be per person.
Once you've established the guest list, a great way to communicate with everyone is by creating a Facebook event. That way, you can create polls to learn which dates suit the group and their budget range and to communicate payment deadlines.
There is no right or wrong way to do it.
Accommodation
Locking in your accommodation will lock in the dates of your event and give you a clearer picture of how much of your budget you have left for activities. We found a house on Airbnb that slept all 12 of us and was also the perfect size for our activities.
Just be mindful that Airbnb has a 'no party' policy, which commonly means you cannot invite additional guests onto the property and disrupt the neighbours. For us, all of the people staying as guests were the only people attending the weekend, and our evening drinks ended at a suitable time of 10.30 - 11 pm so that we could all get enough sleep for the next day. The host even had outdoor security cameras pointed towards the outdoor entertainment area where we spent most of our time (so I knew they were watching what we were doing). We got a lovely 5-star review afterwards. If you leave the place clean and tidy and do not act disorderly, you can use Airbnb for girls' weekends. If in doubt, message the host beforehand.
Our accommodation cost was $170 per person for the two nights.
To save money on accommodation, you could stay at one of your own houses and have a sleepover party or choose one house to host all the activities, and all go back home to your beds.
To complement the camp theme, you could even rent a summer camp for the weekend and have the guests stay in cabins.
Activities
We had plenty of things to do over the weekend to keep busy. Each activity earned each guest a patch (some games had limited patches available), so by the end of the event, the girls had sashes filled with patches.
Most of these activities were cost-effective. I got beads from spotlight, the girls brought their own alcohol to make cocktails, the candles were from Amazon, and I was working with a florist who gifted us a bucket of flowers to use. Our biggest expenses were for the morning yoga and the boat cruise, which cost $85 per person altogether.
If you are stuck on activity ideas, refer to TikTok. You don't need to go out and spend heaps of money. Some of the best activities can happen at your accommodation and can be enjoyed over a cocktail.
