Planning The Perfect Nash Bash

Personal

When this photography thing stops working out for me, I really think I’m going to become a party planner! As my cousin’s Matron of Honor, I was of course tasked with planning her bachelorette party. The Perfect Nash Bash. A Nashlorette. Whatever you want to call it, we had SO. Much. Fun. And I can’t wait until our next girl’s trip!

There were a total of 10 girls. The bride, 5 bridesmaids, and 4 other girls who came along for the ride! 4 of us drove in from Savannah with a PACKED car, 3 girls flew in from Virginia, and the last 3 flew in from Miami.

To shop all my amazon purchases from the trip be sure to check out my list here. I’ve linked as many things and places as I can!

Planning & Prep

The first thing we did was pick dates and book the rental house. Due to schedules, we ended up planning the trip for Feb 2-5 but I don’t really recommend going in the winter. I’m sure crowds were better since it was considered “off season”, but it was stinking COLD. The warmest it got the entire weekend was 55. I made a last minute decision to order a big ass box of hand warmers and they sure came in handy!

For our matching outfit we opted for crewneck pullovers instead of t-shirts. Etsy has tons of styles and patterns to choose from! These are the ones we ordered and the shop we ordered them from, but I don’t necessarily recommend ordering them from her. There was a little mix up with our order and only part of it shipped, but the owner was quick to make sure we got the shirts in time. Our 10 shirts came in 4 different packages…

My sisters had the brilliant idea to cut off the bottom of the sweatshirts to make them a little more flattering. Gen Z, man. Can’t live with em, can’t live without em.

The bride and I also worked together to build bachelorette survival bags for all the girls – they were so cute! I got these monogrammed faux leather bags from Etsy, but you can also find them cheaper on amazon – just not monogrammed. I started getting things almost a year ahead just so I could spread the cost out over a longer period of time instead of procrastinating and splurging at the last minute. Most of what I put in the bags can be found in my Amazon List, but here’s the official round up:

Monogrammed faux leather purse, small cosmetic pouch with their name on it, a big cup with their name on it, the matching pullover, a satin scrunchie, ring pop, hand sanitizer, makeup wipes, liquid iv, chapstick, nashville sticker, heart glasses, sheet face mask, eye gels, nashville personality sash, glow sticks, hand warmers, alka-seltzer hangover tabs, little bottle of advil, travel tums.

I’ve been ordering city decals from this gal on Etsy for a while and I love her work! I got each of our girls on the trip a nashville sticker… you can see them here! I’ve ordered her big and smaller size and I prefer the larger one. I also got a fathead of the groom made and put his face all over confetti to hide around the house. People are going to be finding his face for months!

I made a Bach Itinerary google doc that I shared with all the girls so they could see outfit inspiration and our schedule. I even made a cute version of it for them to save on their phones. The whole trip they kept asking “when are we doing this” “when are we doing that” and it became a running joke for someone to whine back, “check the itinerary!” but all jokes aside, everyone was thankful for it because it prevented us from having any wasted time, while still having down time. People knew when to eat, what to wear, etc. It’s not like I was a total stickler to the schedule. People were free to do whatever they wanted to do! I got the template on Canva just by searching bachelorette itinerary.

The night before we left, we put decals alllllllll over my car so people could celebrate with us on the road. A few people actually sent money for drinks! Much better than the other people you see using chalk marker, and thank god we didn’t use marker because it rained most of the drive there!

Packing Essentials

Call me extra, but I like to come prepared, if not a little over prepared. Whenever I stay at rental homes I always bring some of my good toilet paper, extra paper towels, trash bags, laundry & dish detergent, flushable wipes, bleach, lysol wipes, a case or 2 of water depending on how many people there will be. I also stalk the listing photos to see what kind of toaster and coffee maker they have so I can plan accordingly. I’m slightly a germaphobe and I don’t like using other people’s keurigs. You never know how long the water has been sitting in there, and I don’t trust other people to take care of their things like I do. At home I live for my single serve coffee maker, but on the road I only go for the old fashioned ones.

I also was not planning on doing ANY dishes while we were there, so I stopped at Sam’s before to get big paper plates, small paper plates, paper bowls, plastic cups, and plastic silverware. Yes, my hippie heart was hurting with how much waste we were creating, but my distaste for dishes outweighed my need for being earth-conscious.

Another thing I’m super glad I brought with was a backdrop stand and my big ring light! I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hang a balloon arch but in my experience, they never stay up 😂. I had the thought to bring one of my backdrop stands from the studio and the balloon garland and backdrop stayed up the whole weekend! Oh, and an electric balloon pump. Because nobody ever wants to blow up all those balloons. The balloon kit is linked in my amazon list.

Night One (Thursday)

My sisters and I stayed at the house to decorate while my cousin and one of the other girls went to the airport to pick up some of the ladies that were flying in and then they stopped by the grocery store for some perishable essentials we weren’t able to bring down in the car. Y’all. We never got any stinking cooking spray and I swear I never realized how often I use it, but there were a handful of times over the weekend that we needed some!

The decor was minimal but cute and I linked everything we got in the amazon list!

We kicked off the trip with taco night at home and a lingerie party (surprise #1 for the bride). This is the lingerie set I ordered (for her) and (for him)… I opted for the funny route over sexy and everyone loved them. After all the excitement, we headed out to Broadway and hit up Jason Aldean’s bar. This was my favorite singer’s bar of the whole trip! The DJ there was the best one of the entire weekend and he did a really good job keeping the party going. We started on the ground floor but made our way up to the rooftop pretty quickly.

Half the group went home after this bar, and the other half of us went out in search of snacks! Honky Tonk Central was a few stops down from the last bar and they had some fab late-night munchies for us.

One of the main selling points of the VRBO we booked was the rooftop firepit. But when we got there, the rooftop was a mess and it was too cold & windy to hang out up there. The house left a little more to be desired, some of the girls found bugs in their bed when they went to sleep the first night…

Day One (Friday)

The bride’s second surprise was this personalized jean jacket. I ordered it without personalization and then embroidered her new last name on it myself (because I can do that now 😝).

We had originally planned on doing a guided photowalk mural tour with my girl Gina who owns Photowalk Nashville, but the group decided we wanted to give it a go ourselves… We ended up only finding a few murals and then gave up because we were so hungry from all the walking. I highly recommend booking through Photowalk Nashville if you want to experience more murals and learn some more of the history of The Gulch for the perfect Nash Bash. #candyheartsgulch #thebachparty #whatliftsyou #nashvillegulch

We stopped in to Saint Añejo for lunch and had such a great time. The atmosphere and the food were all great and they were able to accomodate our big group fairly quickly.

After walking off a bit of our lunch, we headed home to get ready for the Drag Show and surprise #3 (a hotseat on stage and other treats for the bride). The night’s outfit theme was sequins and/or fringe. We didn’t want to limit or restrict the girls too much so we kept the themes pretty broad.

Originally when we booked the drag show it was called Illusions but I think they’re in the middle of transferring ownership because it was being called Diva Royale most of the time. It was a little sus’ to start out and we were all kind of wondering what we got ourselves into when they took us upstairs, but the show turned out great and we all had a fun time! It was only an hour long and some of the girls were disappointed when they learned that at first, but honestly I don’t think my voice could have lasted any longer than an hour in there! Looks can be deceiving, but I would definitely recommend the show. It was the epitome of the perfect Nash Bash.

When the show ended (around 8pm) we headed to Broadway and visited Luke Bryan’s bar. It has 3 levels like a lot of the other bars, but it leaves a lot to be desired. We weren’t fond of the crowd that was there and their DJ was not that good. It doesn’t help the fact that I left my phone in the bathroom and it was legitimately lost. I realized it was gone by the time we got to the next bar, but by the time I went back to get it someone had turned it in, but it wouldn’t be collected until the very end of the night, so they told me I would have to come back in the morning. Luckily, I logged into iCloud from my sister’s phone and was able to report it missing so nobody would be able to use it and we were able to keep an eye on the location to make sure it never left the bar. I had a good buzz going but after losing my phone, it kind of killed my mood so I was cranky the rest of the night.

Dierks Bentley’s bar was the next one we went to but it was terrible. The band they had playing downstairs was really good and had an awesome presence, but the second floor was way too cramped, people were rude, and the DJ wasn’t that good. We went to some other bars after that, but I don’t remember what they were called.

Be warned, Broadway St gets shut down at some point over the weekend and cars aren’t able to get through, so you have to walk over a few blocks for your uber to pick you up. There are tons of cops watching out for everyone and we felt very safe.

Day Two (Saturday)

We kicked off our second full day with a “tour of the city” on The Nashville Tractor. I put “tour” in quotations because it was barely a tour. It was more like a party bus ride through the city complete with drinking games, jello shots, and lap dances and we would have stayed on there all day if they would have let us. Our outfit theme was books, black bottoms & jean jackets. There was one other bridal party on the tractor with us who were a younger, rowdier bunch (if you can believe it) and then there was another group celebrating some lady’s 50th birthday. It was great watching her get a lap dance.

By this point, most of the girls feet and legs were killing us from all the walking, dancing, and poor shoe choices. After the tractor tour, we shopped around a bit (I got a very overpriced $30 tshirt) and then we headed back to the house for a nap. When it was time to wake up for dinner and to get ready to go out (the outfit theme for the night was all pink and we were going to go to Miranda Lambert’s Bar, Casa Rosa) nobody wanted to be the first to admit how tired they were (but leave it to me, I was the first to bring it up!!) so we made the decision to stay in and we just played games and drank in the rental house. It was a nice, laid back way to wrap up the trip.

I had prepared a few games.

Filling tissue boxes with ping pong balls, tieing them around your waist, and seeing who could twerk their box empty first
I cut a pair of pantyhose in half, put an orange inside, then we tied them around our and to see who could swing their “penis” to get a balloon past the finish line first.
We purchased the adult charades/heads up app and played that for a while. Some of us may or may not have almost peed our pants from laughing so hard.

Here are some more game ideas from Pinterest!

We wrapped up the night by roasting s’mores over the stove! I got these marshmallow skewers and was going to be so mad if we didn’t get to use them!

Before going to bed we started to pack up some of the house, take down decorations, clean up / take out alllllll the trash.

Day Three (Sunday)

After taking 3 girls back to the airport and then loading up the car, we headed to the Pancake Pantry for some brunch before hitting the road. Just warning you, they DON’T have alcohol. So, no mimosas. When we pulled up, the line was wrapped around the building, but there was a sign that said the average wait was only 20 minutes, and somehow surprisingly it was pretty on point. Even for our group of 7. The food was so good, but the mimosa thing kind of disappointed me! On the way back to the car we stumbled upon one more mural. Then it was time to hit the road back to the good, old Lowcountry.

Extra Tips To Plan The Perfect Nash Bash

I was genuinely surprised at the amount of homeless people around Nashville. I never really felt uncomfortable, but they were kind of everywhere. One tip I’ve picked up over my time traveling, when you go out to eat, instead of having the restaurant throw away your leftovers because you can’t take them home, box them up and give them to someone on the streets. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it and it isn’t much skin off your back.
We did a pretty good job not losing anybody… Until we did. After that, the teacher in me kicked in and I assigned everyone a number, and every once in a while I would yell “count off” and everyone had to yell their number to make sure we weren’t missing anyone. Having to do a 10-head count so many times got to be a little much, so everyone just counted themselves. Some people laughed, but we didn’t leave anyone behind after that!
Download the SplitWise app. I discovered this app on another bachelorette and it’s a incredible way to split payments between the group and keep track of who owes what. Sharing an uber with only a few girls? You only have to split it with them. Need to collect the deposit for your VRBO? Put it in the app! It will link to Venmo or Paypal, or you can mark a cash/check payment inside the app too. You can also settle up other guests balances, in case people in the group want to take turns paying for things for the bride. It’s a good way to keep a running total of how much the trip has spent.