Sara Kangas called it “a great problem to have.”
The director of communications for a Washington think tank was invited to five weddings this year, a reminder that she is rich in friendship. Less great is the “financial creep” that comes with attending each. There are the flights, rental cars and accommodations, the welcome dinner outfits and gifts.
On top of it all, she’s been tasked to plan a June bachelorette trip for one of them — and trying to do it on a budget. It’s not an easy task in 2026. Since she went on her first bachelorette trip in 2015 — a lake house trip that cost her $200 — Kangas has noticed that itineraries have gotten more elaborate.
“Everything has changed in the last 10 years,” said Kangas, 34.
The bachelor(ette) party has grown from a raucous night out with friends to costly group trips — the humble bar crawl replaced by a week in Bali.
According to the wedding planning website Joy, the average bachelorette trip cost $1,300 to attend per person, up $600 from 2019. That estimate lines up with what Fora travel adviser Anna Huttner sees with her clients, both men and women.
“People are spending $1,000 to $3,000 per person for a long weekend,” she said. Her more luxurious itineraries range from $4,000 to $6,000.
Rates go much higher for the more affluent affianced. But at every budget, the trend is eating up more vacation days and money than ever before — and shows no signs of slowing down.
What’s fueling the trend
For Americans who move away from home for college, job opportunities or affordable housing, it’s common to have a spread-out social network. Outside of a wedding, sharing an Airbnb in Scottsdale might be your only opportunity to see loved ones in one place, “especially when your friends could live all over the country or even the world,” said Avery Singer, co-founder of the luxury travel and event planning company BachBoss.
“How can you get them all together unless you plan a three-day-long weekend to make it worth everyone’s time?” she continued.
Social media has also created a feedback loop that fuels the concept. The more people post about these trips, the more people are inspired to take — and post about — them.
“You see one or two people do something and think, ‘Oh, that looks cool, I want to do that,’” Singer said.
Huttner said she often gets requests referencing content from influencers like luxury travel adviser Olivia Ferney, who posts about the demands of her own billionaire clients.
“They’ll be like, ‘Oh, did you see that Instagram? She decorated the whole villa and had this specialty dining group come in!’ And I’m like, ‘That sounds great,’” Huttner said. “We can’t recreate every Instagram moment, but we can absolutely capture this celebratory, personal feeling that people want.”
Esther Lee, editorial director for the wedding planning website The Knot, has noticed that, unsurprisingly, Gen Z is particularly clued in to online trends, spurring the “rise of aesthetics when it comes to the bachelor party,” she said.
That can look like customized invitations and “swag” such as drinkware and tote bags, or themes that will resonate with internet audiences.
“I saw one where everyone was dressed like the creatures from a Dr. Seuss book,” Lee said.
“Margs and matrimony” is a popular theme for bachelorettes at Cabo Villas, a rental company in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, said president Julie Byrd. Employees will decorate villas with signs to match the theme, plus prepare room assignments, balloon backdrops, custom shot glasses and T-shirts. Some guests opt for over-the-top arrival details like mariachi entertainment and live donkeys.
“They like custom everything,” Byrd said.
‘The sky is the limit’
Kensington, a luxury travel company, is used to fulfilling lavish requests, like opening the Louvre museum after-hours for private engagement proposals. So it’s no surprise that pre-wedding trips for its high-net-worth clients are over the top, too.
“We’ve done half-a-million-dollar yacht charters for bachelor and bachelorette parties,” said Edita Sgovio, Kensington’s vice president of yachts and ultraluxe travel, whose clients are often business owners and people who have inherited generational wealth.
“It’s like the sky is the limit,” she said.
For bach trips “on land” (think sprawling villas and five-star hotels), Sgovio said the price can range from $40,000 to $60,000, unless you add private airfare, a common request. Flights from the U.S. to the Caribbean will add an extra $30,000 per leg, while “a private jet intercontinental, we’re looking at over $100,000, one-way,” Sgovio said.
When it comes to costs, men’s trips can run higher than women’s. Their group sizes tend to be smaller on average, Joy reports, resulting in a bill being split between fewer people. But they also seem willing to spend more, according to BachBoss’s Singer.
“On average, men make more money than women, and so they do kind of have more room to play with,” she said. “If I’m doing a big bachelor party for all finance guys, they don’t care that they’re spending thousands of dollars at a table in Vegas.”
Meanwhile, “for girls, it’s definitely tighter,” Singer said.
Popular guys trip activities also add to the cost. Huttner is working on a 2027 bachelor trip to Scotland devoted to golf. Over the five-night journey, the attendees will play up to two courses per day.
“Just to get the tee times is $500 per person … and that’s not even the highest-end ones,” Huttner said. “If they want to go to the old courses, they’re around a thousand per person.”
But women are still spending. Sgovio recently booked a villa for a bachelorette in Saint Barthélemy that cost $100,000.
Huttner is working on one for a group going to Miraval Arizona Resort and Spa, where nightly rates start above $1,000.
“They’re gonna do spa treatments and hiking and mindfulness classes and sound healing,” Huttner said of the “wellness-focused” trip.
I want to come back just to play golf here again #traveltiktok #bachelorparty #thankyoujesus
Making it work
As the internet ups the ante with customized goodie bags and private jets, civilians can feel compelled to keep up.
“Every scroll on TikTok is something you should buy, something you should do, these elaborate bachelorettes that look beautiful,” said Gracie Bryant, a bride-to-be from Greenville, South Carolina. “It’s definitely a lot of pressure.”
When it came time to plan her own trip, Bryant wanted to keep costs down as much as possible while still celebrating her milestone.
“Thankfully I have a wonderful group of girls that were like, ‘Gracie, this is the time that you get. So like, let’s do it. Everyone does it,’” she said.
Bryant, 25, ultimately chose Hilton Head Island, a destination within driving distance for most of the group’s 16 attendees, and made only one activity mandatory (a dinner cruise, $90 each). The Airbnb still came out to around $400 per person, but she made it clear to invitees that she would not be mad if they couldn’t make it.
“This is the biggest moment in my life, but it’s not the biggest moment in everyone’s life,” she said. “I didn’t want it to be a burden that everyone felt like they had to do and then get there and be so stressed that they can’t enjoy it.”
Kangas also found ways to make her June bachelorette trip more affordable.
The group is staying at the bride’s family lake house in Eureka Springs, Arkansas (read: no Airbnb fees), and they’ll do much of their own cooking at home. The bride’s family is even coming by to help out on the grill. They’ll still have to pay for groceries, rental cars and flights — and if airfare keeps climbing, the group will likely lose attendees.
Lee — who has attended bachelorette trips in Iceland, France and Upstate New York — said being able to afford them has required “proactivity with budgeting up front.” But she sees the excursions less as vacations and more as investments in friendship. Besides, she knows she won’t be getting these invitations forever.
“It’s a brief period of time — it’s ephemeral,” she said.
If you do miss the boat on bach travel, you can always catch other milestone trips. Sgovio recently had a guest on a bachelorette trip to St. Barts enjoy the experience so much, she hired Kensington to plan her divorce trip to the same destination.
“She loved it. We redid the whole trip,” Sgovio said.
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