Hens parties are ‘sending Aussies broke’ in wild new study

Every weekend around the country, Aussies are “going broke” as they spend millions on one simple rite of passage.

There are only two more terrifying words in the English language than ‘party bus’ – ‘stripper boat’. And they are words that an untold number of minorly psychologically-scarred women know all too well.

You will have seen them, the (by my highly trained estimate) roughly 22,000 women who, every weekend around Australia, move in wobbly schools, forcibly required to put away industrial quantities of prosecco and spend disturbing amounts of money simply because, after six years of living together, two people are about to bite the matrimonial bullet.

Laugh if you want. Scoff. Titter away. But hens parties could be costing Australian women more than $727 million a year.

That’s more than the price tag for buying six Super Hornet fighter jets for the air force and they don’t even get personalised sashes.

(The maths: According to a 2019 Wedded Wonderland survey, the average hens party cost was $614 and in 2023, the most recent year for which we have data, there were 118,439 weddings. If you work on an average of ten hens per party, that comes to $727,215,460.)

Take one friend in her early 30s who told me she has already spent more than $6,000 on more than a dozen hen dos. (She’s lost count.) That’s enough for a nice two-weeker in a semi-decent bit of the Amalfi with a daily spritz thrown in.

How have hens (and equally, bucks) parties gotten completely out of hand?

Hens have officially gotten out of control. Picture: iStock

This month Business Insider revealed just how extreme things have become, delving into the “lucrative bachelorette industrial complex”, with the average attendee at an American bachelorette party now spending at least $2000 each. The picture gets even scarier if you are part of the bridal party – per the story 35 per cent of bridesmaids are forced to go into debt. (And about 30 per cent of groomsmen.)

In the US, there are now apps specifically designed to help arrange bachelorette parties (Bridesquad, Bach), you can hire bachelorette concierges (one in Arizona, now has 16 employees and makes more than $1.5 million annually in revenue) and there specific luxury bachelorette party planners such as Bach To Basic, which organises $75,000-plus blowouts.

Last year a clip of Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper raging about how out of control this has all gotten went viral, amassing four million views in only two days.

“If you are the b---- that is asking your f------ friends to go to Greece for your bachelorette, knock it off, knock it the f--- off, okay,” Cooper said.

“Unless you are paying for every f------ thing, you got the plane, you got the tickets, you got the Airbnb. I don’t want to go to Greece and have to take off time off of work and pay out off the a------ to go to your f------ bachelorette.”

A video last year by Alex Cooper went viral after she raged about how out of control this has all gotten. Picture: @CallHerDaddy /TikTok

Things might not, usually, be quite so outrageous in Australia but long gone are the days of hens parties simply involving a humble cocktail-fuelled night out of watered down jugs of Illusions and day-after regrets. Instead they have become multi-part, made-for-Insta bonanzas that are only slightly more pressured and costly than running a nuclear silo.

Little of this fits even the most optimistic interpretation of ‘fun’.

The financial demands put on hens extends far beyond just some sort of meal but it is not uncommon to include matching outfits, party bags, and personalised merch like T-shirts and hoodies.

Most of the group of women I talked to before writing this said that hens parties are now exhausting, consuming all-day-long if not weekend-long affairs involving multiple stops, activities, destinations and even sometimes costume changes, which is probably how Napoleon described the Battle of Austerlitz. It’s enforced fun set to a metronomically-timed schedule that can and will test a modern woman’s sanity, budget, and ability to listen to Ginuwine’s Pony on repeat.

Earlier this year, an Aussie bride-to-be caused a stir with revealing outfit at her Bali hens party. Picture: Instagram/EmDavies

Do brides really need the out-there hens parties that are becoming more common. Picture: iStock

At least Bonny was never forced to screech ‘woo’.

“I love all my friends but tallied up, it is a huge number to spend on a night out at bad restaurants and pubs or boats or dance classes or life drawing, topless waiters, karaoke, limos, and clubs,” one friend said. “It is a lot of money on a night out where I don’t have any say or control in what I am spending my money on.”

She has another one in two weeks.

(And she might have gotten off lucky – if you read how-to hens guides some now recommend you start the day with a group exercise class too.)

Instagram seems to deserve much of the blame for this amping up and exaggeration. As more elaborate and more stylised hens parties started appearing on social media so did expectations and what is the norm. The bar has, in recent years, been raised and raised and raised to the point where it feels like hens parties have become performative slogs designed to create the best visuals and content.

It is a right of passage for many. Picture: iStock

All of this, and for what? Celebrating love and commitment is wonderful; watching a room full of 30-something educated and smart women drink sugary confections through penis-shaped straws faux-coquettishly giggling because This Is Just What You Do is how your spirit dies and how your credit card tips over into the red.

So let me tell you about one of the best hens parties of my life, which I only went to recently. We glugged BYO wine sitting on the grass in someone’s backyard, a magician turned up and blew our minds and then we ordered pizza. It was perfect. And not a single stupid straw was required.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s media titles.

Originally published as Hens parties are ‘sending Aussies broke’ in wild new study