Cutie Hometown Bach ♥
Twelve hours, call it a day
Bachelorettes used to be a one-night affair. You wore one outfit—not five—dined, danced, partied, and moved it along. Lately, they’ve evolved into a trip, a retreat, a religious pilgrimage. (The bride-to-be becomes a small deity.) Sincere kudos to the women who plan them, but in the midst of wedding planning, I opted for a cutie hometown bach ♥ instead. Below is everything we did. If you enjoy my writing, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. —FLD
I wasn’t going to have a bachelorette for a few reasons.
Group chemistry isn’t guaranteed. I love all my friends individually, but my best friends aren’t close with each other—and every friend is vastly different. One wears Valentino and another wears Old Navy. One is budgeting for childcare, and another is packing for a last-minute jaunt to Aspen. One has never done a drug in her life, and another is going through a ketamine phase. Some value stability, others chase The Plot.
I’m mindful of bridal overload. A bride can do whatever she wants! This is a cardinal rule in the wedding industrial complex, for better or worse. But I believe a reasonable bride gets three events to celebrate her union, including the wedding. Pick two: engagement party, bridal shower, or bachelorette. Have too many bridal events and you risk people feeling burnt out—or worse, resentful—at your wedding.
Planning one is work. Researching, organizing, budgeting, coordinating, communicating, collecting. It’s a heavy workload for an elective course.
But then my friend Kayleigh was like, No, you should!
And that was enough.
Location: Newport Beach, CA — the “hometown” in chb ♥
I used to want to get away. For college, I applied to all out of state schools and wound up on the east coast. But Newport is safe, clean, and wealthy, which means its lifestyle is comfortable and convenient—and the older one gets, the more one appreciates each of those qualities. Newport is also my exact shade of basic.
Guests: Best Friends and Good Friends
I invited my best friends, the ones I grew up with who know my mom and what I looked like in braces. But I also invited my good friends, the ones I met as an adult who have empirical data on work stuff, ex-boyfriends, and my general womanhood. Funnily, I’ve probably celebrated more milestones with my good friends than my best friends. Friendships thrive on geographic proximity and shared interests, and good friends often edge out on both. There were eleven girls in total, including me.
Vibes: Unfussy, Girly
I prioritized a well-paced itinerary, minimal logistics, and simple, girly pleasures. This wasn’t a multi-day destination bach with excursions and props. This was a cutie hometown bach! ♥
I didn’t want girls vomiting in public, or inhibitions running loose, primed to hurt feelings or body parts. I wanted no inconsistencies from the personalities I know and love. It’s not that I think I’m above acting ratchet, it’s that ratchet behavior freaks me out.
Girly meant intentional. (Unfortunately, the wellness industry has tainted that word.) I bought Eiffel tower picks for the charcuterie boards and French toile tissue paper for the party favors. (The theme was “Fendi Said Oui” because my wedding is in France.) Girly also meant doing our hair and make up, and slipping into cute outfits.
Here’s what we did!
Spa: Quaint, Coastal Relaxation
The day started at a boutique spa where each girl received a facial or massage of her choice. Spa Del Rio is family-run and female-owned. I don’t seek those attributes when looking for businesses, but if one happens to have them—hell yeah. There’s a time and place for brand-name, large-scale operations; Kayleigh and I initially considered the spas at Montage and The Ritz-Carlton. But a cutie hometown bach ♥ and a boutique establishment go hand in hand because they deliver the same less is more quality.
I spent hours sifting through dozens of spas in Orange County before committing to Spa del Rio. Thankfully, its 365 five-star reviews proved to be true. Each girl emerged from her treatment looking like she’d woken up from a four-hour nap—disoriented, indulged, and giddy. When we weren’t in treatment rooms, we were drinking, nibbling, and sharing Blake Lively x Justin Baldoni goss in a private studio with a mid-century beach cottage aesthetic.
Hotel Time: Cake, Champagne, and Games
After the spa, we moseyed to a two-bedroom villa at The Resort at Pelican Hill. There is one drawback of the one-day bachelorette: limited time in PJs with the crew, to perch on the edge of a bed holding a glass of wine entrenched in conversation, to sit on countertops laughing at a decade-old joke.
I didn’t grow up in a ‘games family,’ so I used to think playing them as an adult was childlike or silly. I was wrong. Games can be a helluva good time.
In Where Were They?, girls had to guess which country Moritz and I were in for each of nine photographs. Some were obvious: us posing in front of a red telephone booth in England. Others were trickier, like a glacier in Argentina that everyone mistook for Iceland. One friend thought the steps of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan was Mexico.
In The Newlywed Game, the groom-to-be recorded himself answering a variety of questions related to the bride-to-be and their relationship. Questions like: What’s her favorite food? When is she the sexiest? or Who’s most likely to die in a zombie apocalypse?
“He’s so German!” one girl said after a detailed answer Mo gave in response to What’s your favorite romantic gesture to do for the bride? At first, he outlined practical acts of service like planning our trips or taking care of our insurances or buying our groceries. Finally, he landed on bringing me flowers. The girls got a kick out of hearing his elongated a’s and faulty v’s, an accent I’m used to by now.
The Newlywed Game was my favorite part of the day because it felt like the purest encapsulation of what a bachelorette is about—not lamenting your final days of being single or posing with penis-shaped objects or manufacturing a photo for social media, but sitting with your girlfriends watching the man you’ve chosen tell you, by way of party game, that you’re the love of his life. He doesn’t say the words aloud, but he speaks them in others ways—by propping up his phone to film himself, the collared shirt he throws on beforehand, the bids for laughter he makes towards a crowd of girls he knows but not all well. It was golden hour and streaks of light burst through the villa. My cheeks were warm from the wine, undivided attention, and gasping and cooing at what Mo had to say.
Dinner — Flashy, Caloric, Premium
The final leg was dinner at a restaurant in Fashion Island, an outdoor mall I’ve been going to since I was thirteen years old with a fresh $20 bill in my velcro wallet, which covered dinner and a movie in 2005. Ocean 48 shares the same founders as Mastro’s Steakhouse and therefore has a similar dining experience: flashy, caloric, and premium. Also, dark; it is honestly hard to see inside the restaurant.
The “chicken-fried lobster tails” were something to write home about. My martini with blue cheese-stuffed olives was, surprisingly, not, but it got the job done. (The job of any martini is to make you feel decadent, of mind and of body.) I requested our party be seated in the restaurant’s indoor wing with a small pool. The glowing blue hue mimicked an overwater bungalow in the Maldives.
We ate steak, scallops, cheesy pasta shells, truffle fries and other foods abused with butter and oil. The drinks were strong. The waiter was cool. He projected his voice, established an inside joke with us, and never went missing. His energy read, “Ladies, I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing.” At the end, he comped us free desserts, including a beignet tree, or tall fixture with branches sprouting cinnamon-sugar-covered beignets.
And thus concluded my cutie hometown bach! ♥ Girls who stayed over at the villa, including myself, were in bed by midnight. The morning after, my friend Molly and I lay in bed on our phones for an hour, intermittently giggling at our inside joke with the waiter. We reheated leftovers for breakfast, packed our bags, and left. Molly drove me home, and as we approached my garage door, I gave her a big hug and said, “Drive safely to Palm Springs!” Then I walked up to my childhood room, belly-flopped onto bed, and let out a big sigh. I wasn’t going to have a bachelorette, but I’m glad I did—the way I did. When the stakes are low, the reward feels extra sweet.
The most important part of the bach is to feel loved, connected, and enjoy fun times with the girls. It's the quality of energy that is most meaningful.