10 Tips I Learned from Last Weekend’s Bachelor Party

The past weekend I went with seven of my closest friends to Montreal for a bachelor party, giving our buddy one final set of shenanigans before he enters the mythical land of marriage wherein he… I don’t know. Watched a lot of Homeland.

The details of it are not to be publicly talked about (try being the blogger friend at a bachelor party, it’s four straight days of “If you write about this, I will kill you”), but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any non-scoring-molly-from-strippers tips for the perfect bachelor party weekend. And if you want advice on how to score molly from strippers, I don’t know. You’d probably have better luck at a music festival. I hear that’s in these days.

Plan ahead. Plan way, way ahead: We organized this trip sometime in early February, nailing down the location during a day-drinking session that involved a giant map of the United States and calls to Austin, Texas to see if their strip clubs allowed full nudity (they do not). But the beauty of what seems like planning stupidly far in advance is that it makes the hit you take so much less. Flights are cheaper. Then you can space out the rest of the payments. Hotels a few months later. Maybe prepaying for an event. This way, instead of dropping $1,000 two weeks beforehand, by the time the weekend comes, you’ll feel like you haven’t spent a cent.

Spring for a suite: If you have enough people to merit two hotel rooms—and what lame bachelor party involves under four people?—make one of them a suite. It won’t cost that much more when split eight ways, and it gives everyone a natural point to congregate: to put back beers before going out and to collectively wallow in misery the next morning.

Plan one non-alcohol oriented activity: That may sound stupid because I know your plan is booze, booze, sluts, booze, skanks, sluts, but four straight days of doing nothing but drinking at bars can get a little old. So plan to attend a baseball game. In Montreal, we went to a spa for four hours. You can drink during this, but at least you’ll have done one thing in 96 hours where the sole goal wasn’t to get shitfaced. You’ll feel better about your life.

Go to Canada: Not only is there no cell phone service, so shit from the weekend will be less likely to wind up online, but for $11—and without a prescription—they will sell you 200 extra-strength Tylenol with codeine and caffeine. Yes, Canada has magic hangover pills.

Don’t be the first guy to have bad gas: This is very important. The night before, I had mussels with sausage and beer and cheese and at the airport … wooooh. I then got blamed for every single stench the rest of the weekend. I was the automatic scapegoat. I would be asleep in the other room and hear someone rip a fart and instantly call out my name. Fuck you, Jack.

Keep the room freezing cold: Your room will have four dudes in it who, for four straight days, will be vomiting on their clothes and tucking them back in their bag; forgoing showering; oozing sweat all night and brushing their teeth less than once a day. Your room will stink, but if you keep it at a frigid 65 degrees, it will stink a lot less.

Day clothes are important: You will want a nice suit to throw on, one to wear to impress the ladies at the club before getting denied entrance because you were literally holding a flask as you handed your ID to the bouncer, but you are also going to be doing a lot of things during the day. The day is like most of the day, so if you don’t have comfortable shorts (and sneakers, because you will walk a lot and I don’t care how cool your Havaianas make you look), you’ll be miserable.

You won’t bang a stripper: Unless you have a lot of money.

On Sunday: Get shitfaced at the airport bar. It’s really the only way. You may think it’s smarter to endure the hangover, but no. Just drink and pass out on the plane. And with that said…

Take off Monday: Unless you are a weekly wage slave, slanging rocks at the rocks factory, you probably have the ability to take off an extra day. So when you schedule your vacation for this, be sure to take Monday off. You are going to be worthless at work if you do show up. So instead of sitting at a desk and fake-entering data into Excel, you can take naps. Glorious, glorious naps.

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