So apart from the initial confusion in the title [where does that apostrophe go? is just the girl getting married a hen, so its a possessive, or are they all hens, so needing a plural and possessive]...
I'm a little puzzled by the tradition. Quite separate from the fact that I just had a fantastic weekend... what's the point of this? Who invented it? Is it just the 'live a little before you settle down' thing... last night of freedom, out on the town with the girls...
I went to the most trusty source of information in the world (wide web) and found some fantastic
"bachelorette party" facts:
- Many bachelorette parties have the ladies wear matching tops that are sometimes manually decorated.
- A variant of manual decoration is for the ladies wear plain white T-shirts on which comments can be written with magic marker. [Now doesn't that sound fun!!]
-It is estimated that less than 20% of all bachelorette parties include a stripper [sorry to be an academic for a moment but estimated BY WHOM?]
- The bachelorette is often intoxicated by the end of the night, as both her friends and men she meets in the bars will continually buy her drinks.
Hmm. Still no help on the background of the idea... although follow the link above for the picture that accompanies this classy caption: "
This bride got stripped to her underwear and soaked with beer by her friends on her Hen Night". I wonder if "this bride" knows her friends also put her picture up on Wikipedia? Somehow doubt it.
I did get this though: The history of bachelor party is thought to have originated with a bachelor dinner that was traditional in ancient Sparta (5th century BC) where soldiers would toast each other on the eve of a friend’s wedding.[citation needed]
Ah,
citation needed. Fills me with confidence.
