Looking Back: My Bachelorette Weekend

My bachelorette weekend was just about a year ago in New York City. I was living there at the time, and it was fun and central to all of my friends, so I kicked Matt out for the weekend, we all piled into my friend Vincenza’s East Village apartment, and settled in for #AVERYcrazyweekend.

I wasn’t blogging at the time, so I figured a year later is a good time to recap the weekend, right?

My friends began to trickle into town Friday morning. I took the day off work and we ate brunch, shopped around, caught up, giggled, you know, girl stuff. We got $9 juices and ate crepes. It was that kind of day.

We eventually made our way down to the Bite Beauty Lip Lab in Soho. We each took a turn pairing off with a lip color specialist and blending our own shade of lipstick. How it works: you describe what you are looking for, and the technician makes an attempt to create it. You try it on, decide if it’s what you’re looking for or if you want to adjust it, and keep the cycle going until you’re happy with your shade. Then you pick a finish and a scent and your lipstick is mixed and molded as you wait. My shade, of course, was bright red with a mint and vanilla scent in a creme finish. I still wear it all the time. My girlfriends picked shades ranging from the perfect nude, to bright fuschia, to unexpected coral, to deep purple. It’s amazing how we’re all so similar but so different!

Instead of waiting for our lipsticks to set in the tiny lip lap, we headed down the street to the Birchbox Soho store to shop a bit. I was a Birchbox employee at the time and very excited to show off the flagship store to my friends! Afterwards, we scooped up our lipsticks and headed to get ready for dinner.

Friday dinner was at The Cottage, a Chinese restaurant in Union Square that serves you bottomless wine with your entree. Chinese food and bottomless wine is like, the ultimate bachelorette dinner, right? And we ended the night out at bars taking pickleback shots and drinking vodka sodas and dancing and singing and doing what girls do.

The next morning we were up and ready for brunch at Palma. This restaurant was amazing. So adorable with a beautiful patio garden. And the food was delicious as well. As a surprise, my friends coordinated to have my mom and my friend Katie’s mom join us. They drove into the city from New Jersey and I was so surprised and excited for them to be there! There were gifts, including a gorgeous necklace from my mom and a frame my girlfriends made. They each put on the lipstick we’d made the night before, kissed the mat of the frame to make a lip print, and signed their names. It was such a unique and thoughtful gift!

     

Of course, my bachelorette weekend also happened to coincide with the semi-annual Sephora sale. So we popped in for 20% off false eyelashes, which we perilously applied before heading out for the evenings events.

The main event for the weekend was a two-hour figure drawing class. Sounds lame right? Except for the nude male model. It’s like an elevated form of stripper. No one can claim there were no naked men at my bachelorette! The Artful Bachelorette hosted us in their studio space on 14th street, where a topless waiter kept our champagne glasses full, an art instructor taught us the basics for line drawing, and the lovely Kurt bared it all. The drawings came out awesome and the whole event was so fun. Apparently some of my friends are expert artists, who knew?!

We piled into an Italian restaurant after the drawing class, the name of which escapes me now, but apparently they had great drinks.

We ended the evening at yet another bar. For my 21st birthday wayyyy back in 2010, my friends created a poster for me to wear with 21 things to do during the evening. Get 21 boys numbers, 21 kisses on the cheek, 21 happy birthday songs, take a tequila shot, etc. They created a similar poster for my bachelorette so we spent the night checking things off as we went.

Wrapped up the weekend the next morning with the largest Seamless bagel order ever and a stroll along Fifth Avenue. We were all exhausted and worn out from the weekend’s festivities but it was so incredible and even though it was a year ago, it was so fun and special that I still remember it like it was yesterday.

P.S. Thank you, Instagram, facebook, and my friend’s incessant use of hashtags for the photos in this post. #AVERYcrazyweekend #basicbachelorette

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