​My Nottingham Hen Do

My Nottingham Hen Do

I’m a big fan of surprises – always am, always have been. I’m also what some may call a “bit of a drama queen” - I love big, showy things, anything that’s over the top, anything that most normal people might consider to be “making a scene”. My amazing fiancé knows this, and that’s why he proposed to me in a big show in front of all my friends on a night out on my birthday, and it was amazing.

But that’s why my maid of honour was very honest about planning the hen do. “I want there to be some surprises” she said, “but also I know that you are very specific about the sorts of things you like, so I hope you don’t mind being involved in planning some of it.” And the truth was, I didn’t mind it at all. After all, your hen weekend is the most special weekend away with the girls that you’ll ever have, so why wouldn’t you want to be a part of planning it, to make sure it was the best that it could possibly be?

Picking Nottingham was an easy choice for me. It’s somewhere I’d been on many other nights out over my life, so going back to somewhere that I know always gives me a good time was a sure fire pick. However, I didn’t know much about what the plans were for our activities. All I knew was that we had to be there by about 2pm on the Friday, because that’s when the first activity was due to take place.

With all that in mind, I was in Claire (my maid of honour)’s car on that Friday morning and we were soon zooming down the motorway to get started on the best possible Nottingham Hen Do. Pretty soon our gang of nine had met up in the car park of the hotel where we were staying, and while we weren’t able to check in quite yet, we were at least able to drop off our bags before we went off to our first activity.

As we were quite a diverse group of hens, and some of the group hadn’t met some of the others prior to this weekend, I had said that the first activity we did should be something that allowed all of us to mingle and get to know each other better, which Claire had clearly taken to mean “this activity needs to involve drinking so that everyone can relax”, which was a pretty spot on idea to be fair. Given those criteria, she absolutely nailed it by booking us an afternoon tea with unlimited prosecco – a perfect option that allowed us all time to chat with each other while eating some lovely food and drinking as much prosecco as we could handle.

Later that night, after freshening up and visiting a couple of bars to get us in the mood, the next surprise was revealed. Except this one wasn’t a surprise – this was the one thing that I had specified was essential to my Nottingham hen weekend – a session of Karaoke. After all, I do a mean Cyndi Lauper impression, and all of the girls tend to enjoy a song or two. We spent a couple of hours in a private karaoke booth smashing our way through classic after classic. The wine came and went as we made our mark on Nottingham’s music scene.

Then it was on to more bars to see what we liked the best. There was definitely something for everyone on our first night out, with everything from classic pubs to cocktail bars being venues that we visited along the way. Our night ended at one of the cheesiest nightclubs you can imagine, where we took over the dancefloor and really let our hair down to end the night.

Day two, therefore, was always planned to be a late start. Apart from having hangovers, lots of us have jobs, kids and partners at home that require us to get up early, so the novelty of having a lie in was not one to miss out on! In fact, we had no plans whatsoever until the afternoon, when we headed off for a pampering session to ensure that we were as relaxed as we could possibly be. I was treated to a head an shoulder massage that was worlds better than any I’d ever had before, and this combined with the pool and the sauna meant we spent all afternoon in blissful relaxation.

Rather than spend another night bar-hopping our way around Nottingham, we’d decided to actually book an evening activity to really treat ourselves – and believe me, it was a treat for us all. We had booked ourselves into a cabaret night, which turned out to be one of the best possible things we could have done on my Nottingham Hen Do. This cabaret night was an absolute belter – we had food laid on, some amazing drinks and it was hosted by a hilarious drag queen. Combine all of that with the floor show where we got to see some of the sexiest men I’d seen in a long time do their thing (and being the hen, I even got invited up and got a special little section of dance just for me), and this was an absolutely perfect Nottingham Hen Do activity that I can highly recommend!

After the cabaret, we all wanted to dance until we couldn’t dance any more. With that in mind we found our way to one of the cities most popular nightclubs, where we once again took over a section of the dancefloor and entertained ourselves, each other and many spectators until the sun was starting to come up, before we headed back to our hotel to collapse and get a few hours sleep before we had to pile into cars and head home.

My Nottingham Hen Do was amazing, and was something that I will never forget. I can highly recommend it, and I hope that you all have as much fun as I did!

The Stag and Hen Experience has been creating the best bespoke hen weekends since 2009, so, if you're looking to plan a hen weekend package anywhere in the UK or abroad, get in touch on 01202 566100 or via this email address [email protected] and one of our expert hen do organisers will help you put together a fantastic hen weekend package for you and your group.