Hen weekend - how many ladies invited?

I have invited 27... but that is half family and half friends... I have only had 10 confirmations so far.

Me and H2B are having our weekends at the same time, the only place this has caused issues so far is when the mutual friend couples have young children. As H2B is going abroad it has meant that those with young children are only coming to the Saturday night of mine!

But this is what I wanted to do, you need to do whatever you feel comfortable with and if that means only a few of your close friends then so be it!

I also have girls coming to the hen do that aren't coming to the wedding at all!!! But they know this and are fine with it, they just want a good night out with me!

Bank holidays might be tricky and also more expensive?

I kind of agree - I didn't want a huge hen night, but kind of changed my mind a bit.

My mom, despite nearly being 50 had other ideas to the quiet sophisticated dinner/club night I want - she is thinking a weekend away in Magaluf - I know it's some people's thing but it's really not mine.

So I have drawn up a guest list - includes Mom, Aunties x2, MoG, 2xSIL2B plus my brothers GF. My 5 bridesmaids and a few of the girls. I'm not close to the best mans GF but have invited her out of politeness - will probably invite the OHs of h2b's friends too - again out of politeness. I'd rather meet / get to know them better before the wedding.

My main hen weekend (in just under 5 weeks!!) is very small, only 6 of us. However we have gone on an all-out weekend and these are the people that I absolutely feel my most comfortable with so I couldnt be more excited.

I am having another girls night in hen night in November with around 12 people but again this is just the close friends and family that couldnt make the first one.

I have not invited distant friends, partners, cousins etc..

I only had ten at mine and three of them were family members. But then we did travel to Edinburgh from Suffolk for mine. I probably would've had another one back in Suffolk had I not been pregnant. But didn't see the point as I couldn't drink lol x

I've got 9 I definitely want to invite and 6 other maybes. Four of those are my bridesmaids, one is my stepsister and the rest are friends.

I have 15, so including me it'll be 16. That is the hen weekend, but I'll have another night out afterwards and invite those who can't make it. I did the oposite to Mrs C and made sure we had our hen and stag on different weekends, as a few of our friends (who are couples) have kids so we wanted to make sure they could come. I think the hen and stag combination could be good fun, as long as H2B wants to do that! x

I had 10. That was me, 2 bms, mum, MOG, my grandma, my OH's nan, my aunt, my OH's dad's wife and my bm's mum! It was perfect! We went to a spa and stayed in a hotel and had a nice meal in the fancy hotel restaurant! We just added our own silliness and willies! We all dressed up and we had lots of wine! (the wine in the sauna was my fave!)

We were going to have a night out on the town closer to the wedding but we were too busy! And the one weekend we were free my OH forgot about a wedding we'd been invited to so we had to change plans and go to that! Men! It was his school friend that he goes running with and watches football with!

I did check with the couples first to make sure they could make some of it!

H2B has refused point blank to have a "hag" party!

There will be 12 of us all together and they are people who i feel that i can be myself around and that i would classify as my good friends/ family. We are having a small wedding and therefore was easy to keep the numbers down.

To be honest I am not sure about having your hen, his stag over a weekend and then meeting up at the end of it. If i was meeting a group of people for the first time I wouldnt want to do it after i had burnt the candle at both ends for a weekend, probably have a bit of a hangover and am worrying about traffic on the way home. We are planning on having our hen and stag on different weekends as there are couples with children who would have problems with childcare if they both had to go off for a weekend. We are planning on having a hag of sort,s we never had an engagement party and so i am thinking that we might have a very belated one where everyone would get to meet one and other.

I think it would be ok to have both over a bank holiday but as you say people quite often plan to do things over them so i would make sure the invites go out with plenty of notice.

No, I didn't mean it in a negative way. It's just people couldn't have done part of our hen/stag as we're both going away (me to Manchester, OH to Portugal). So it was all or nothing for ours. Had our friends not had young kids, we probably would have done the same weekend x

Hi Im having 14 including me and thats my mam, sister and aunt then the other 10 are all close friends. I'm not inviting anyone from h2bs side cause I dont know them that well, not even inviting his brothers girlfriend as we dont see each other often and tbh I dont really like her (the feeling is mutual). May sound bad but I wanted just my close friends and family so I could really just be myself and have fun xx

I'm having 2 hen nights, one in Somerset with my mam and my friends down there (I think OH's niece who's a BM has invited herself as well but thats fine) and there'll probably be a dozen of us, generally being a little bit loud and drunk.

The other one will be in Hull and will be MIL2B and all OH's aunts and cousins plus my work mates and a couple of good friends I have up here. I think thisone will be a nice meal then lose the 'older' ones then clubbing till dawn (or 10 o'clock if my feet start hurting lol)

I arranged my SIL's hen weekend and there were 12 of us in total - Bride, me (bridesmaid), 6 of her friends and one of my brother's friends from school all stayed in a hotel in London. We met up on the Fri eve (some of the girls flew in from Hungary, Spain and Ireland) and had a quiet night. Then Saturday morning we had a treasure hunt in Covent Garden, then my Mum, Grandma and one of my cousins joined us to see Grease and then we all went for a meal. Afterwards Mum and Grandma left and us girls went to a Roller Disco and finished off clubbing ?

I'm really proud of that weekend!!

Sorry for the delayed reply as not been on for a couple of days, but just wanted to say thank you very much for all your replies, really helpful. NurseBride2B sounds like you did a great job for your SIL!

It's good to know that some of you are going big, others smaller for your hen do. I'm definitely warming to the idea of inviting the girls I don't know so well to get to know them better before the big day, but equally do like the idea of keeping it just close friends who I feel really comfortable with.

tinks269 that's a really good point about everyone having to meet each other when hungover! definitely one to think through some more, maybe we have a party separately for that. h

Great ideas, I really appreciate you all replying x

There were 10 of us on my hen weekend. We did ours the same weekend, although to be honest none of my friends that were invited had kids.

Most of our friends were all together on the friday night before we went to our seperate weekends away, and all got back together on the sunday night, but thats because we have quite a few friends that are couples (there are about 12 of us in our main circle of friends), and then just a few others to add to the mix on the saturday morning.