Brides are bringing back the one-night-only bachelorette party: 'You just come, have one perfect night and leave'

Brides are bringing back one-night-only bachelorette parties as a simpler alternative to multi-day, high-spend destination weekends. Designer and writer Talia Mayden, based in New York, described a June celebration with her closest friends that lasted less than 24 hours: pre-dinner drinks on the Lower East Side, a $1,100 private dinner in Chinatown for 25 people, and an hour-long party bus ending with late-night scream-singing at a nearby dive bar. By 2 a.m., Mayden said they were calling Ubers to go home. The approach contrasts with today’s trend of itineraries, coordinated outfits, and large bills. Data cited from wedding planning site Joy puts the 2025 average spend at about $1,300 per party, nearly double 2019. Sociologist Beth Montemurro of Penn State Abington links the shift to late-1980s and 1990s patterns and broader wedding evolution.