The Social Distancing Bride
This virus has caught everyone off guard. But I’ll be damned If I let a pandemic get in the way of a good party. If your Bride to be (B2B) has had to call off the wedding, she will no doubt be feeling pretty blue right about now. So, it is your duty as bridesmaids/ chief hen party organizers to lift her spirits and throw her the best virtual party you can. Here are some ideas on how.
IF YOU ARE ALSO IN THE UAE, just be careful what you are saying and doing on camera. Make sure nothing could come back to bite you if you know what I mean. Can’t be too careful!
Out and About
No. No out and about for you. Stay home.
Staying in
Group Chat
You don’t need to use a video conferencing app for these, as they work just as well in the format of a group chat. You just message the idea, or the rules and the guests can send back photos or videos. You can tie some of these activities together into a contest. You can always collectively offer to pay for a takeaway or order something nice for the person who wins overall. Here is a scoresheet to help you keep track.
Get glammed up
Just because you can’t head out to a salon, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a full-on make-over from the comforts of home. Get the Girl Power playlist on the go and get glammed up. Take your best selfie and send it to the gang so they know you are ready for a party. I actually host my own workshops, and I can show you the best tips and tricks to help you really up that selfie game. Scroll down to the video conferencing section for more details on that.
Glitter yo' selves
If you really want to feel like it’s a party. Crack out the glitter! You don’t need to be an expert. Just stick a bit of Vaseline wherever you would like the glitter to stick and go nuts! Make sure to snap a picture and share your sparkly self with the group.
Pamper session
If all that makeup sounds like far too much work, go the other way and get into your comfiest, softest outfit, get out the facemasks and put those slippered feet up. Sometimes all it takes to really transport yourself to the spa is the right music, and some cheap and easy treatments like shop-bought facemasks and nail polish. Get everyone to take some photos and videos of their home spa set up and you guys can decide who has put the most effort in.
Create your own beauty products
You can include this in your at-home pamper party, but it's a great stand-alone activity too. Send this Mammoth List of DIY beauty products to everyone and challenge them to make at least two of them using only what they have in the house. Get them to send pics and videos of their process as well as the finished product.
Open Wide
This one is more for hilarious blackmail footage than anything else. Tie a strong string or twine between two objects that will hold it firmly in place. Then tie peeled bananas (or hotdogs), so that they hang down from this string. To play the game, players must use only their mouth (one hand behind their back and one hand recording themselves) to eat the entire banana/hot dog from the string. I’d recommend asking them to take a bird’s eye view video specifically, then send it to either their boyfriends/ husbands* or add it to their tinder profile. The person who eats it in the shortest time (as evidenced by their video) wins!
*Girlfriends/ wives will probably find it amusing but not as relatable
Flying school
This one requires a couple of supplies that shouldn’t be too hard for everyone to get. You each need a decent-sized piece of card or paper (bigger than A4) and design your ‘Flying School’ (as pictured) and hang it over a door frame or anywhere there’s an open space behind it. Each person must design and pilot their own paper plane through one of the holes on the board. Smaller holes win more points but are obviously more difficult Make sure everyone’s board is roughly the same by giving a specific measurement for the holes. Give your pilots 5 turns to score as many points as they can. They must have a video of the 5 turns one after another, no cuts in the video allowed! The X Rated version is when you draw a male appendage on the plane and a lady part around the holes on the board. Childish? Yes. Hilarious? Absolutely.
What age was the bride?
This a really nice, nostalgic game to play. Simply find photos of the Bride at different ages either through her parents (they would love to snap some of the old album ones I am sure) or through Facebook and send them to the group labelled 1 – 10. You then ask each person to send their guesses for each number. The person closest to the real age wins a point, and the person with the most points at the end wins. You can also break this up a little bit by incorporating statements/ stories of things the B2B has done or said and ask people to guess the age she was when they happened. This is a good way to make the game last longer if you end up with not that many photos.
Mad Abs
Otherwise known as “Who spends the most time staring at celebs with their tops off?” Spend a little time screenshotting photos of famous male celebrities with their tops off*, then create a copy of those photos and crop the heads out. Ask the players one at a time to “identify the following celebs by their abs alone” and send the photos with numbers attached. Ask each person to share their guesses as a list (1. Ryan Gosling 2. Channing Tatum etc). Keep track of each players score without revealing who they got right. Once all players have made their guesses, you can reveal the final scores and the correct names. In the event of a tie, you can tell the tied players how many they got right, but not which ones, and let them go again to see if their score improves.
*The obvious choice is to opt for hot, chiselled guys, but it’s equally fun to choose celebs with dad bods too #equality
Draw a D**K on it
All you need to do is collect a bunch of photos/ line drawings of random objects, which you then send to people and give them 1 or 2 minutes to draw a d*ck somehow onto it in the most creative way possible. This book is excellent inspiration and will provide all the material you need if you are willing to buy it. The group votes on each masterpiece and the winner is the one with the highest score.
Wedding Mood Board Contest
This is actually much easier to do digitally than in person. Each person must create a ‘mood board’ of what they think the B2B’s perfect wedding would look like. They can use apps like Layout, or one of these mood board apps to help get the photos together in one image. Or just screenshot a Pinterest board. Give everyone 15 minutes and then everyone must share their board at the same time. Each person then must “present” their board to everyone and explain their thought process. The B2B decides who’s board wins!
Tutorial time
Many of us have fallen victim to the ‘easier than it looks’ YouTube tutorial. So what better way to harness that disappointment than turn it into a contest! Assign people one or more youtube tutorials that they must try to replicate. You can choose to either let people follow along with the tutorial by sending it to them. Or, if you're feeling mean and want to adapt it into a video conferencing version, make them watch it in full once, via your end of the conference call, then replicate it from memory. You decide on a type of tutorial and what suits the group.
If you have a mixed group and a pretty large number, it's a good idea to host it as a sort of league, with different levels of difficulty for those who apply a contour daily and those who haven't worn make up ever. As well as everything in between. Make sure you challenge everyone, without making anyone feel totally left out. Here's an epic list of the top 100 beauty vloggers on YouTube to get you started.
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Guess Who
Get a photo of the bride’s spouse to be and send it to one person in your group. Then send pictures of a bunch of other people/ characters to everyone else. Make sure you have a good variety of physical appearances. Now, the job of the B2B is to narrow down who has her fiancé by only asking 5 questions ( you can always make it more if that’s too hard). So, if she says, “Who has blue eyes?” Everyone who has a picture without blue eyes says, “I’m out”. I’d recommend getting the B2B to write down on some paper everyone who is taking part, so she can score them out as she goes. If she guesses correctly in within the limit of questions, she wins. If she runs out of questions before successfully finding her partner then the person who has that photo wins. Simples!
Wedding face charts
If you have anyone in the group with experience as an MUA, then they will be familiar with face charts. Basically, you just send each person one of these blank face sheets, and then give them a set amount of time (around 10 minutes usually works) to draw on what makeup they think the B2B should wear on her big day! Printing this off and using actual makeup or coloured pencils, obviously works best. But if there are some who don’t have access to a printer at home, then using the crude edit tool on your phone. You can choose to be sweet and genuine, but there's always one who opts for the clown make- up in a hilarious twist. The B2B can then choose her favourite.
Sell it to me
This a simple concept that is much harder than it sounds. First step: get everyone to grab the thing nearest to them and take a photo of it. Step two: once you have received all the photos in the chat. you tell everyone that they have to send a voice note or a video, where they sell you the item they just sent a photograph of. The pitch can be no longer than two minutes and everyone in the group only has 5 minutes to send their attempt or they will be disqualified (stops people stealing others ideas once they hear them). Everyone can then vote on each person’s sales pitch and the one most people would buy is the winner!
Staying In
Video Conferencing
These ones require a bit more interactivity and participation so you really need to use any app that will allow you all to chat together. Zoom is proving to be the most popular, with Skype and even Facebook and Snapchat group video chat options also available. You can tie some of these activities together into a contest like a sort of relay. You can always collectively offer to pay for a takeaway or order something nice for the person who wins overall. Here is a scoresheet to help you keep track.
Lipstick-tionary
Pictionary, but not as you know it. The same rules apply, but you use lipstick instead of a pen, your mouth instead of your hand and the people screaming wrong answers at you aren’t actually in the room. You need to ensure that the people on your device can see you properly, so try and set up your camera in whatever way makes it easiest for them to guess as you draw. Use my Dirty Pictionary cards for maximum laughs.
Party/ Drinking games
The traditional Hen weekend is the ultimate party. Therefore, it’s only fitting that the suggestions in the Party Bride category will be where you will find most of your inspiration. Many of the ideas in this category can be adapted to a virtual format, and right now there’s 30% our basic subscription off so it’s definitely worth it just to access these ideas.
Cold Feet
People might not thank you for this one. Each player has to fill a large serving bowl with ice cold water then dump ten items that everyone has (think keys, large coins, jumbo paperclips etc) inside. Players must compete to be the first to get all of the items out of the bowl of freezing water using just their feet. If you want to keep it fair, make sure everyone has the same 10 items and they are roughly the same size, also that all the bowls are roughly the same size.
Put a ring on it
The family-friendly version of this game involves using skewers to pick-up ring-shaped sweets (Party rings, gummy rings etc) and either stack them up on the skewer or move them from a bowl to a plate using only your mouth. As many as you can in 30 seconds or 1 minute (depending on how many sweets you have/ the size of the bowl etc). Now that’s all fine, but this is a Hen weekend so really, what you should be using instead of skewers, is p*nis – shaped straws. With the p*nis end firmly in your mouth and your hands behind your back. I can personally vouch for how hilarious it is when Aunt Janice can’t pick up anything because she is beside herself with embarrassed laughter. However, we addressed above that it might be slightly wasteful every person to have to order a packet each. So skewers are fine.
Beer/Prosecco Pong
All you need a table, cups, a ping pong ball and some Beer (or Prosecco if you want to say “Hen party” more than “Frat party”). Set up the table with just one set of cups at the end you are scoring into. Place the device you are using to video call behind these cups, so you are looking at it as you shoot. If you get the ball in, everyone else on the call drinks from the cup that they have set up in the same place and turns it over. You can choose to drink yours or just move it aside for later. If they score, you drink from your cup and turn it over etc. continue until all cups are turned over. You can decide based on the skill level of the group how many turns each person gets before you move on to the next person.
Tying the knot
Players must race to tie the most cherry stems into knots as they can with their tongue. This does mean that everyone has to have cherries at home, so you’ll need to tell them to get some in advance of announcing this game. Basically, it’s a way to figure out who has the most talented tongue skills. So, it’s also very fun to up the stakes by asking the B2B to predict who she thinks will come first. If she’s wrong, she does a shot! Here’s an instruction video which has left me no closer to figuring it out tbh.
Selfie workshop
Ever spent far too long trying to get that perfect selfie and wondered how on earth those Instagram ‘models' do it? Wonder no more, my friends. As a professional photographer, I actually host my own workshops, and I can show you the best tips and tricks to help you really up that selfie game. Contact me on sherrie@howtohen.com to book and we can host a fun group session over zoom. The workshop is around the 30 min mark and has lots of interactive activities. The cost is 200aed (around £45 or $55 at the moment).
Let your fruit hang low
The classics are often the best. You can use either, just some string/ ribbon to tie a banana to your waist and let it hang down between your legs. Or, if you are using a rounder fruit like an orange, stick it in the leg of a pair of tights (pantyhose) and let that leg hang down, tying the other one around your waist. The aim of the game is to swing your new appendage around and guide a ball on the floor to a designated finishing point. In order to keep it fair. You’ll have to measure out the start to finish distance and make sure everyone can replicate it using tape at home. Fastest time wins!
Take it off
Step one: ask each person to gift wrap a shoebox/ or any box really that has a pair of underwear inside it. Don’t tell them why. Step two: players must now race to unwrap the box, open the box, and get the underwear out, using only their mouth. Then they may use their hands to put them on. OVER their clothes, come on now. First one to wear their underwear wins. Or, if you'd rather go one at a time, fastest time wins. If you're concerned about putting your mouth on wrapping paper*, feel free to play with oven mitts instead. It's equally hilarious.
*IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that the underwear and the box and the wrapping paper are all CLEAN and haven’t come into contact with the outside world since this whole thing started. Do not blame me if someone opens the plastic on the gift wrap that they just picked up yesterday with their teeth and ends up catching this virus. Be sensible kids.
Cup Cakes
Each person needs 10 plastic cups. Allow them to put them out in front of them so they know where they are, then ask them to blindfold themselves. Each player has to create a “cake” out of plastic cups. Meaning stack the cups, duh. Without knocking over their cake. The first player to do it is crowned victorious.
Toilet Paper Wedding Dresses
Now… This may be a bit insensitive if your town is currently one of the ones going through a shortage. However, you could also look at it as an actual useful thing to do with all that toilet paper you bought entirely unnecessarily. Everyone has 15/20 minutes to go away and create a stunning wedding dress made entirely out of toilet paper, which they will have to model to the group. The players will score each other’s outfits using this toilet couture scoresheet. Tally up the final scores and see who comes out as the best designer of the bunch!
Mr and Mrs
THE quintessential Hen do game. I have created a handy document just for you with tons of questions, both PG and X-Rated. Get the answers in advance as always, and then ask the Bride to be in the call. You can also ask the others to write down their answers as you go. If no one gets the answer right, then the bride has one drink. If she gets it wrong but other people get it right, she must drink for every person that got it right.
Movie Night
There are so many amazing movies that should be a staple in a Hen weekend, and just because you aren’t together doesn’t mean you can’t watch them together. Netflix party is an excellent extension that allows you to sync up your computers and chat throughout the film. But not all these titles I am recommending will be on Netflix, so you could also try Kast or any of these other video watching options or these ones.
I have broken these movies down into categories. Click on them to open up drinking game rules. If SOMEHOW you still don’t see anything that catches your eye, then please check out all the other themes and categories and I am like 99.9% sure you will find a movie to suit.
Weddings
Nostalgia/ Rom-Com
- 10 things I hate about you
- She’s all that
- A Cinderella Story
- Mean Girls
- Clueless
- 13 going on 30
- Legally Blonde
- The Princess Diaries
- Ella Enchanted
- Sweet Home Alabama
- Freaky Friday
- Easy A
- Love Actually
- Bridget Jones’ Diary 1, 2 & 3
- The Notebook
- Titanic
Girls just wanna have fun
Musicals
Other Touches
It might be a virtual party, but that doesn’t mean you can’t indulge in a few little touches to make it feel like you are all celebrating from the comfort of home.
Before you go any further, you should know that some of the suggestions from here on out are going to be themed on the male anatomy and being generally filthy and rude. So, if you’d like to get some ideas that are a little less ‘in your face’, then please browse all of the many other themes and categories on the site.
Remember that you need to get your hands on The Toolkit if you want to see the fully unlocked version of the site. Many of the other ideas I talk about throughout the site can be adapted to virtual versions so just because you can’t go out, doesn’t mean it’s not getting that toolkit anyway.
Food & Drink
You might not be eating together, but that doesn’t mean you can’t set a menu! You could send out a shopping list in advance. If the shelves aren’t still empty from panic buying, then most people should be able to pick up some basic things that make it feel like a party.
You would be AMAZED at the number of phallic shaped foods there are once you really start to think about it. From the obvious chocolate covered bananas and literally anything involving hotdogs, to the more subtle corn on the cob, particularly these ones covered in all sorts. Corndogs, mozzarella sticks and even roasted carrots, despite looking a little depressing and er… skinny, will still add to the overall effect when served together. You can also chop a strawberry in half, put a banana piece in the middle, stick the whole thing on a skewer et voila!
You can also buy ready shaped foods like these marshmallows, this candy and this pasta! We really are living in the future folks. These can almost always be ordered online so no need to go venturing outside.
Since you aren’t really able to all share a wonderfully inappropriate cake, you can order cupcakes to the Bride’s home (major supermarkets should still be doing deliveries) along with these delightfully inappropriate cupcake toppers, these cake sprinkles (which are just adorable) and this totally necessary candle. Then she can decorate them herself and send you guys the finished result.
Rude cocktail names are already a well-established trend, as will anyone who has ordered an orgasm from a bartender will know. So, have a look at this list for some inspiration on the best ways to give your at-home cocktails a filthy name. Of course, you are probably limited to what you have in stock already or what you can get in your weekly shop, but hey that’s just gonna force you to get creative!
Decor
If you are doing most of your celebrating over a video conferencing app like Zoom, it would be really fun to have a few bits and pieces of hen party décor around you so that when you are all on-screen together it really feels like you are there celebrating with everyone.
Let’s take a short sausage break for the moment and deal with the usual décor that you might expect. Your standard decorations will usually include one of the following phrases: “Bride to Be”, “She said Yes”, “Miss to Mrs”, “Bride Tribe”, “I Do Crew”, “Team Bride”, “Last Fling before the Ring” or even the wordy “Pop the champagne she’s changing her name". Which variation you choose is up to you but usually, you can purchase banners, balloons, banners made of balloons, cups and even plates and napkins with these printed on them in traditionally “girly’ colours. The easiest way to do it is to find a Hen/ Bachelorette party supply store online and then everyone can buy what they are going to need all in the one place. Obviously, you don’t want to buy whole packs just for yourself, so you can just buy the individual banners or even make them yourself out of card and fishing wire!
You can also purchase banners, balloons, cake toppers, confetti and other décor that focus more on the ring theme. This is a nice touch for the Classy or Glam Bride or the Royalty theme.
Okay, now that's dealt with. back to the meat and two veg. There is an entire industry dedicated to making things like these balloons, this cutlery, and these banners. Again, buying anything that comes in a multipack is a bit wasteful if it’s just for you, so try and only get individual things (unless you are going to save them all up for the real hen you eventually have when all this is cleared up)
As if that is not enough, there’s this wonderfully helpful video on how to fold your own phallic cloth napkin. I’m fairly certain this is the exact reason the internet was invented.
However, if in doubt and it’s a classic Hen do look you are aiming for, just think pink! Regular party décor becomes a Hen do when the whole room is just various shades of pink.
Extras
First things first, if you are going to have a proper hen party later down the road then you might want to wait on this bit. However, if you aren’t sure you are going to get the chance again, then you need to make sure your Bride to be is totally decked out in her Tiara (bonus points if it’s a rude one), her sash, L plate and her feather boa. All of which you can send to her place via delivery.
If the traditional pink L plate isn’t quite her style, then there are cute and classy versions too.
