More than a decade after the original made a colossal impact on pop culture, James Cameron has decided to grace us with the second instalment of Avatar. If you’re planning a bachelorette party for a special lady in your life who was REALLY into the original, then why not have an Avatar-themed hen weekend? Keep reading for some top tips on exactly how to make that happen.

Games and activities

Glow in the dark face and body painting

I’ll start off by saying that there’s going to be a lot of mention of Glow in the Dark products in this blog. Because honestly, how can you expect your guests to believe they have been transported to pandora unless everything looks beautifully glowy and bioluminescent AF?

That being said, get yourself some glow-in-the-dark face/body paint or skin safe powder and get your guests to either paint their own or each other’s faces in Na’vi war paint in any design that takes their fancy. You can always turn it into a competition and ask the bride to judge.

Want someone to do the hen party research you don’t

have time for?

Archery

You might remember that Neytiri (the fierce and fabulous Navi princess) was a dab hand with a bow and arrow. You can be too (probably) if you book Archery lessons as one of your bachelorette weekend activities. The once-niche activity has grown in popularity over recent years so I have faith that you’d be able to find lessons near where you will be staying.

Horse riding

While the horses on pandora might look a little eh… different, there’s no arguing that the Navi are also excellent riders. So, it only makes sense for you to take the crew for horse riding lessons or a group trek as part of your Avatar-themed hen weekend. You can pretend you are riding through Pandora on the back of a giant direhorse

Water-based activities/games

Since the second instalment of Avatar centres so heavily around water, you might want to include some water themed activities in your bachelorette weekend. This could include things like: Synchronized swimming lessons, surfing, Water Polo, a “Mermaid for a day” experience or just lounging in the pool works too.

You can also play party games involving water which you can see in the second half of my “Relay Race” Idea pack.

Design your own Avatar

If you’ve always wondered how you’d look as an avatar, why not find out?

If everyone has access to a device and the internet, you can use this really cool game you can build your own Avatar. Either let everyone do their own, or you can turn it into a game where you get each person to design someone else (this only works if they know the person they are designing for well). You then get the bride to guess whom each avatar is supposed to be. For every incorrect guess she has to do a forfeit or a shot.

If you want to be a bit more low-tech, you can download and print this image and provide everyone with colouring pens and pencils to doodle away to their heart’s content.

Decor

Like I said before, you can’t expect your guests to feel like they’ve been transported to the wonderful forests of Pandora without a buttload of glow-in-the-dark stuff everywhere.

Rainforest decor

So then, step one is to decorate your venue until it looks sort of like a regular rainforest. You can do this with these banners, many packs of these large artificial leaves and a ton of these hanging foliage vines. Throw in some exotic artificial flowers like Birds of Paradise, Cala Lillies, Orange Lavender, Morning Glory and “Galaxy” dendrobium orchids for a bit of colour.

Step two is to cover these with glow-in-the-dark paint and a ton of this glowing powder I mentioned earlier. You can go all one colour for that bioluminescent look or you can get a pack of multiple colours https://amzn.to/3Vk8QrY for a more varied, tropical feel. If the paint proves to be a bit messy, glow-in-the-dark pens might be easier.

Glow-in-the-dark tape also makes sense as you can use it for everything and anything around your venue to make it into a focal point at night. I’d recommend sticking it around any lettering you have on banners or signs, so they are still readable with the lights off.

Lighting

Once you’ve got your forest, you can start lighting it with a couple of these old-school fibre optic lamps

Then really bring the whole illusion to life with the proper lighting.  If you’re on a budget, you can get these 3 packs of colour-changing lights for less than a tenner. Or if you’ve got a bit more budget you can invest in these bigger floor floodlights or even a night sky projector if you really want to blow your guests away. If you want to invest in a UV Blacklight, that will also add a cool neon element to your decor and make sure all the glowing elements stay “charged”

Make a tree of souls

If you have time, money, and enthusiasm for crafting, you could make your bride’s day by making a tree of souls.

Step one is to build your trunk. Depending on how solid you want it to be you can use crumbled brown paper, cardboard tubes or actual scrap wood. Here’s a rough tutorial on how to do it with paper

Once you have your trunk. You must add those stunning glowy branches that make it unmistakably a tree of souls. There are a few ways to do this depending on your budget and the amount of time you have to set up.

The most impactful but probably trickiest way is to use many LED rope lights These lights come in different sizes and say they are “Cuttable”… which honestly I am unsure about. But if you are willing to try it, you can get multiple packs of these and cut a variety of lengths, which you then attach to your ceiling along the “Branches” and leave hanging down at different heights. Make sure to trail the wires down your tree trunk (You might even want to do the trunk as step 2 in this case)

If this sounds too risky/ difficult/ expensive, you can just go for regular white ribbon. It’s much more cost-effective and will still look really pretty and ethereal. Dip your ribbons in glow-in-the-dark paint to still get that lovely “Avatar” vibe once the lights are off.

White rope will also do the trick and will be closer to the actual size of the vines on the tree of souls, but it just won’t look as pretty. You could carefully wrap each rope in Glow in the Dark tape for a nice effect at night, but it will leave it looking somewhat yellow – y during the day.

Food and Drink

Glow in the dark ice

Staying truly on our glow theme, did you know you can make glow-in-the-dark ice cubes using tonic water?! Here’s a handy recipe to show you how.

Blue Signature Cocktail

Granted, glow-in-the-dark drinks only make sense when you’re sitting in the dark which you won’t often be doing probably. So why not create a big bunch bowl full of a signature blue cocktail?

Na’vi Smoothie Bowl

For a healthy breakfast, you could follow this recipe for a Na’vi Smoothing Bowl. It’s also totally vegan-friendly!

DIY Night Blossom Cocktail

If you’ve had the pleasure of visiting the closest thing we have to an actual Pandora here on earth, namely the one in Animal Kingdom at Disneyworld Florida, then you might have had a chance to try their signature Night Blossom cocktail. Follow the linked recipe to make the basic drink and add Rum to make the grown-up version.

Anything Blue

Aside from getting things like doughnuts, cookies and cakes which can all be covered in blue icing, you can also just turn normal everyday food blue.

If you want to avoid the liberal use of blue food colouring, there are one or two ingredients you might want to have handy when looking to make blue food and drinks. The first is Butterfly Pea Powder. Not only does it create gorgeous shades of blue, it also magically changes colour when exposed to a variety of liquids such as lemon juice, gin, tonic or any alcohol really. It’s very pretty and creates a wow-worthy moment if you can get it to work.

If you’re familiar with the wellness world, then I’m sure you’ll have heard of Spirulina by now. It’s the stuff in every Instagrammable blue smoothie or shake of the last 5 years. Stick it in anything that is a little bland but light in colour and voila, you’ll have yourself an Avatar-themed treat.

Favours

Doing Avatar-themed favours can be tricky without going tacky quite quickly, so a gift that’s a more subtle reference is probably best.

For example, these Avatar-inspired bracelets have the colour scheme down, without being overly chunky and costume-y.

This feather necklace is similar in that it’s inspired by Neytiri’s feather garland she wears across her chest.

For the nail enthusiasts, a glow in the dark gel polish is an affordable but still thoughtful gift. The same goes for this glowing glitter polish

I was sure I would find terrifying Avatar style Na’vi sheet masks to show you, but alas, I think you’ll have to make do with gifting this generally blue one (also available in tube form). They will still look great and kinda Avatar-ish if you all wear them at the same time.
If you have a little more budget, you could also give this L’Oreal one which is a bit classier and feels more like an actual gift.  

I wish you all the best on your Avatar- themed party planning and I hope this list was of some help to you. As the Na’vi would say, “Kea Tìkin”

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