Stag Weekends can be expensive, but they don’t have to be.
It’s important to remember that since people tend to get married at around the same stage in life, when blokes reach a certain age they can find themselves attending a Stag Party every few months, for a period of several years.
This is fine if you’re organising number one but, after the seventh or eighth, people soon dread the e-mail that begins ‘For Barry’s final night of freedom, we’ve picked a super-casino on the outskirts of Dubai. Please wire half your annual income to my account’. And [pullquote]you don’t want the Stags to be resenting you for draining their wallets before anyone’s even got a sniff of a stripper’s G-string.[/pullquote]
With this in mind, here are six simple and cheap stag do ideas to help you keep costs down:
1. Stay in the UK
Stag Dos abroad are something of a modern phenomenon, and of course they can be amazing fun. However, if you’re looking to save money, this is the absolute first place to start. [pullquote position=”right”]The basic ingredients of a great Stag Do are blokes, beer and banter. Penthouse apartments in Shanghai are not necessarily essential to the success of the weekend.[/pullquote]
2. Run ideas past the group first
[pullquote position=”right”]The first thing you should do when organising a Stag Weekend is collect everyone’s e-mail addresses and send out a message outlining your ideas.[/pullquote]
If there’s no opposition you can go ahead and book, safe in the knowledge that no one’s gonna be bitching about how expensive kite buggying is when it comes to paying the bills.
3. Rent a house, not a hotel
One of the best Stag Dos I’ve been on involved renting a big house in the country. There were one or two simple activities planned during the weekend (rugby match, nightclub), but we actually ended up spending the majority of our time in the house, which made the whole thing really affordable.
It had a huge garden, and a hot tub, and plenty of space so that we didn’t feel like we were living on top of each other. The thing with hotels is that not only will they cost you more on a per night basis, they also carry with them a whole bunch of additional costs – you have to eat out for every meal, not to mention drink out, and those tend to be the things that hit wallets the hardest.
4. Pick night-clubs in advance
It’s definitely best not to wait until everyone’s hammered and the Groom has fallen asleep in a skip before picking a club. Not only is there a reasonable chance you’ll get royally screwed by opportunistic doormen, but many places will give you money off the entry fee if you book in advance, or even complimentary drinks for the Stag (in the Birmingham Walkabout recently, my brother got a free bottle of something roughly approximating budget Cava. Lucky him).
5. Don’t blow the budget on custom-made items
Printed t-shirts with everyone’s names on is always a great lark, but don’t go overboard. They’re likely to be worn just once, so there really is no need to have them woven from the finest Egyptian cotton.
Let’s face it, most of this stuff will end up covered in sick anyway.
6. Operate a kitty
If you’re out on the town and everyone’s buying different rounds, it can be absolute chaos, not to mention unfair to those who get lumbered with bigger bills. Get a kitty going and the lads will all be much happier. Simply take twenty quid from everyone at regular intervals, topping up when you need to.
