Destination Bachelor Parties Aren't Going Away

Being in your early 30s in 2023 means a handful of things: your career is (probably only just) in full swing, your hangovers last three days, your personal life has gotten moderately more serious and you’re a regular traveler to U.S. cities like Nashville, Charleston, Miami and Vegas.

I say this because many Millennials, myself included, are partaking in as many as 5 to 10 bachelor or bachelorette parties a year — a significant number of which now involve a schlep to a place where matching “Bride Tribe” T-shirts and “Last Fling Before the Ring” sashes are standard fanfare.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly bach parties became mini vacations (presumably sometime in the early aughts), but I’d venture to guess that the reason why has something to do with the rise in the age at (first) marriage in the U.S. A century ago, the average woman got married at 21 years old, while men got married around 24. Now, both men and women are both more likely to marry between the ages of 30 and 32. Perhaps it’s the extra decade of anticipation, or just that 30-year-olds generally have more disposable income than most 20-somethings; but now, according to a recent study by Wedding Wire, roughly one in five bachelor (22%) and bachelorette (17%) parties require a flight to get to.

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Further, nearly 60% of those who fly to a bachelor party spend around $1,000 per person, with the average bachelor soiree including around eight guests. It’s a lucrative business, these stag weekends, and it’s no wonder several companies are trying to cash in.

One planning and booking platform called Bach, which is designed for bachelorette parties, just raised $9 million in Series A funding, per a new report from Skift. Notably, the startup has facilitated nearly 500,000 parties and is reportedly on track to facilitate one in every five traveling bachelorette parties in the U.S. this year, so…hardly a bad investment.

It’s not promising for the late 20-, early 30-somethings waiting for the destination bach trend to fizzle, though (this shit is expensive!). In fact, one trend prediction piece implied we might start seeing a surge in bachelor trips to the tropics. And none of this is even factoring in the divorce rate in America, which unfortunately means that some of your pals may be due for a do-over in the foreseeable future.

All of that said, another recent poll found that two out of every five people think that bachelor/bachelorette parties are more memorable than the wedding itself. So maybe the argument here should be less about doing away with the bach trip, and more about scrapping the wedding.