Travel-Themed Bachelorette Weekend in New Orleans

Recently I had the honor of planning a travel-themed bachelorette party of my best friend. I have known Lindsey since our first day of high school, when we discovered that we not only shared an uncommon hobby (Irish step dancing), but also a last name. While I’ve known her for 15 years, I was still nervous about planning this party. At first, I had no idea what to do for the party – all I knew was that she wanted to go to New Orleans, a place I’d never been, and that I wanted to make it personal and special. I wanted it to reflect who she was, what her friendship was like with the other ladies attending, and a celebration and acknowledgment of her upcoming nuptials.

What to do?

The trouble was, while I was pretty good at recognizing something that would be perfect for Lindsey when I saw it, trying to come up with an idea was making me worry. It wasn’t until I stopped thinking about it for a while that the idea came to me. I remember stopping in my tracks to text her brother (with whom I was sharing “Matron/Man of Honor”  duties). I’d finally figured it out. A travel-themed weekend. It was perfect. Ben agreed.

Lindsey and I have shared a love of traveling and have had many adventures together around the U.S. and abroad. Lindsey met her fiancé when she moved to Spain to teach English and they’ve shared many adventures together since then, around the U.S. and abroad – he even proposed while they were traveling! Her other bridesmaids and friends attending had also shared adventures with her around the U.S. and abroad. To top it off, one of Lindsey’s favorite things is maps! I don’t know why it took me so long to land on something so obvious!

Now what?

Having this theme immediately opened the floodgates of ideas for how to proceed. Of course Pinterest provided lots of inspiration. To begin, since we’d be staying in an Airbnb home, I could bring some small, easily packable decorations for the house. I decided to make this paper roses out of an old map book that my mom made me put in my car when I started driving (shh! Don’t tell her I cut it up!). I found the directions from Dream Posy and made about 6 or 7. I also cut out some leaves from green paper to make the greenery in the arrangement.

The vase came from the dollar store, and I created a black city outline with a dye cut my mother-in-law had, and laid it over a printed map paper and glued it to the lower half of the vase. I finished it by wrapping a few rounds of twine over the edges to give it a vintage-y packing rope kind of feel.

Next, I overlaid a map print on an L and A  from the craft store by tracing the letters on the paper, cutting it out, and gluing it on. Painting the edges really made them feel finished.

I was inspired by everafterguide.net to create a few garlands out of paper hearts (also cut out from that map book – shhhhh!) I don’t know how it happened, but I never got a picture of them hanging at the party – this picture was just my inspiration.

The last decoration I included were some spherical chocolates that were wrapped in foil with globes printed on them, which I found on Amazon. Often, the travel theme coordinates well with vintage, which is awesome because another genre Lindsey loves is vintage. I found that faded vintage silver candy dish for a few dollars and heaped it with the chocolates!

Useful Party Favors

The next topic I needed to tackle was the party favors and supplies for the ladies – I wanted to help them make Lindsey’s party feel amazing and also do something to make them feel special also, since they also play important roles in Lindsey’s life. Since New Orleans allows you to take your drinks with you as you move between venues throughout the city, I chose to put treats inside of reusable iced beverage cups. I found double-walled tumblers at Dollar Tree, similar to these, but with glitter between the walls – I picked up a few extra, also, just in case someone is having so much, ahem, fun, and accidentally leaves theirs behind at a bar. Trust me, they came in handy too!

Inside the tumblers, I placed some more chocolates, gum, bandaids, individual packs of Advil, an immune support drink mix, and some hair ties. I ordered the elastic ribbon from some shops on Etsy and and made the hair ties myself – all you have to do is cut them to the right length and then knot them a certain way. Then I created the graphic card saying “To have and to hold your hair back” using https://www.canva.com/, printed them on cardstock, cut them out, and slid the hair ties on them. I chose an arrow pattern because it lent itself well to the travel theme, the fleur de lis because it represented New Orleans, and “Team Bride” because, well, duh.

In the photo above, you can also see a luggage tag. I knew Lindsey wasn’t the type of person to enjoy a “Lindsey’s Bachelorette 2018” design, so I found a quote about New Orleans, created a graphic on https://www.canva.com/, and then lucked into an awesome sale on www.shutterfly.com to have them printed. There is space on the back for people to write their contact information. I have to say, this was one of the things that I had to show basically everyone else in my life who knew Lindsey, because I was so excited about it, but needed to keep it under wraps from her and the other ladies so that they could enjoy the surprise. The tag was such a fun little favor and reminder of our trip, and it is also practical and useful, so it felt like a double win!

On the straw of the cup, I tied a note with a ribbon, explaining that one night that we were out, we would each tie the ribbon around our wrist, and when Lindsey untied our ribbon, we’d buy her a drink. This made sure to keep Lindsey pampered, and also helped us share the cost. I created the graphic using Canva, and then printed it, cut it, and punched a hole so I could tie it to the cups.

Knowing how much Lindsey loves maps and globes, I searched high and low for a little globe to have people to sign for her. I finally found one at Home Goods. When Lindsey saw it, she said she’d been planning to use a globe at the wedding as their guest book!

Passports

Probably the most unique thing we had for the weekend was a custom passport with an itinerary and a few getting-to-know-you activities inside. I did that since there would be about a two hour window between when we all arrived and when Lindsey arrived for the weekend, and I wanted to help facilitate introductions and connections. As it turned out, we wound up being stuck outside for about 45 minutes under the covered porch in the middle of a rain storm with all our luggage, waiting for the Airbnb owner to come give us the key. We wound up getting to know each other under other, less fun, circumstances. My incredibly talented mother-in-law helped me. By helped, I mean we talked, and I made artistic decisions. Then she basically created them on her own, while I worked on WAY less complicated projects. I did help with the gold embossing at the end though. Doesn’t the aging on the paper look AMAZING?!

We made a few other personal touches to the decorations, that I never managed to get a picture of. We found an image of the street sign where Lindsey and Abe lived in Spain and printed it and placed it near the door to the room she was sleeping in. We also found an image of the bar she and Abe loved to visit and we hung it near the kitchen.

The hard part about having so much fun planning stuff like this is that once it is over, I still get excited to find stuff that would be perfect, but then have no reason to buy it because the reason you needed it it now over. Have you ever felt that way? I had such a blast doing all of this, and being able to share it with you helped me relive all that fun! I hope you enjoyed the ideas!