It’s been a whirlwind around here lately.
I spent this past weekend in the Catskills celebrating my birthday, and the weekend before that had a few friends in visiting from out of town. I can’t believe I haven’t yet had a chance to share the highlight of my month: my bachelorette party.
When my closest girlfriends brought up getting the ball rolling on planning a bachelorette party for me, I’m not going to lie, it stressed me out. I’m lucky to have close friends from many different periods of my life—high school, college, various jobs—but everyone lives about as scattered on the map as you can get. The thought of finding a date and location that would work for everyone sounded, to put it plainly, like a nightmare.
After tossing a few ideas back and forth without anything really sticking, it finally hit me. New Orleans was the perfect option. It’s a city I’m obsessed with, it’s a meet-in-the-middle spot for both east- and west-coasters, and it’s built around the concept of having a ball. Bingo.
After establishing that Labor Day Weekend was open for everyone, we decided New Orleans was a go.
I want to use this post not only to share what we did, but to help out other ladies who might be planning a bachelorette party or girls’ weekend in The Big Easy. Maybe some of you are like me and get, um, overwhelmed by details, or you’re planning the party for a bride who does, so hopefully you’ll find some helpful recommendations here.
Here’s what we did.
FRIDAY
For our lodging for the weekend, we rented a gorgeous Garden District home on AirBnb.
I can’t overstate how happy I am that we did this. Instead of cramming into hotel rooms, we were able to spread out, enjoy a full kitchen, have big comfy beds and get the true New Orleans neighborhood experience.
The house we picked could sleep up to eight, but there are lots of other AirBnb options for anywhere from two to 12 people. The Garden District is a great neighborhood to choose because it’s beautiful, historic, generally safe, and a short streetcar ride from most of the attractions New Orleans is known for.
Everyone’s arrivals were staggered throughout the day on Friday, so those of us who got in early got settled in the house and took a short walk over to Magazine Street for a few apps at Red Dog Diner.
Magazine Street is a nice change of pace from the insanity of Bourbon Street. Don’t get me wrong, Bourbon Street is one of my favorite places in the world, but it’s wild. The Magazine Street district has lots of cute shops, restaurants and bars without all of the bead-hurling or street-puking that sometimes goes on in the French Quarter.
We stopped at a nearby grocery store to stock up for the weekend (another upside of going the AirBnb route) before heading back to the house for cocktails and catching up.
By evening everyone had arrived and we headed to our dinner reservation at Peche. Peche is the highly rated seafood restaurant of chefs Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt. These names mean nothing to me, but apparently they’re some of the who’s-who in the restaurant biz. As the waiter informed us, they have multiple James Beards. Fahncy.
We split an order of raw oysters for the table and I had the baked drum as my entrée, both of which were amazing. I couldn’t tell you what anyone else had (sorry), but it was praise all around.
The food at Peche lived up to the hype, but it was insanely busy (it was 8 pm on a Friday night, so duh). I mention this because our table of six seemed like a lot in such a crowded dining room, so if you’re a group larger than that it might be a better bet to go for lunch or on a weeknight.
We followed up dinner with drinks at The Bulldog, a Magazine Street spot with a great beer selection and an even better outdoor patio.
Jumpsuit here
On Friday night I wore this jumpsuit from Express (currently on sale!), which I was pumped to find. Most bachelorettes wear a white dress, but I knew for me a tiny, form fitting cocktail dress + the color white were destined to be a disastrous combination, so a jumpsuit was the perfect alternative.
SATURDAY
Saturday was our day to go big.
We started off the morning with brunch at Atchafalaya Restaurant, an adorable little spot a few blocks off Magazine Street with an awesome selection of Southern-meets-Cajun dishes: boudin, shrimp and grits, and so on. They also have a pretty badass bloody Mary bar, which the bloody drinkers in the bunch thoroughly enjoyed.
As soon as our food came out I could see why the place was packed. I had the Eggs Treme, which was poached eggs over French bread and boudin (a traditional Cajun sausage made with meat or seafood and rice) with hollandaise sauce. Two thumbs up.
Oh—and they had a live jazz band! This place is absolutely worth a visit, but definitely make a reservation if possible; we ended up waiting quite a while because we dropped in unprepared.
Saturday afternoon was the first Gator game of the season. Since most of us had been to New Orleans a time or two in the past, I didn’t want to spend a ton of the trip on Bourbon Street, but the game was the perfect opportunity to get our French Quarter fix.
We finagled our way through the crowds (the huge Decadence Festival was also going on that weekend) and posted up at Pat O’Brien’s, which had the game on a projector screen.
If it’s your first New Orleans trip, Pat O’s is a must-visit. A staple of Bourbon Street and a former speakeasy (the legit kind, not the New York hipster kind), it’s been in business since 1933. It’s the bar that made the Hurricane famous.
There’s an outdoor courtyard, a fountain, a piano bar, a plain old bar… basically an all-around solid place to get your party on.
Saturday evening was the best part of the trip and one of the best times I’ve ever had, period.
Minidress here
I went the cocktail dress route (black is safer than white) with this little number, which was surprisingly both flattering and comfy.
We started the night with dinner at Luke, a French-German restaurant and bar by chef John Besh (again, someone important). From the second we walked in, the staff treated us like we were royalty.
We were taken to a private dining room and promptly served a round of tequila shots on the house. From there our servers gave us the treatment. They told us which dishes we’d love, which to skip, where to go after dinner, stories about living in New Orleans, and most importantly, kept our drinks full all evening.
The food was beyond. At our servers’ recommendations, we ordered a little bit of everything off the menu and shared among the table, and there wasn’t a single bad thing. My favorites were the seafood gumbo and the shrimp and crab étouffée, but I think we could have closed our eyes and pointed at the menu and we’d have been okay.
At the end of dinner we asked our servers if they knew it was a special occasion—why were we getting such amazing service?
“That’s just what we do!” they said. If you’re in New Orleans, make sure Luke is on your list.
After Luke and per our servers’ advice, we jumped in an Uber to Frenchmen Street, a district in the Marigny neighborhood famous for live music.
If there’s one thing New Orleans does better than pretty much anywhere else, it’s live music. Walk into any bar on a Friday or Saturday night and you’ll be treated to music that in any other city you’d have to buy a ticket for. Heck, you’ll find some of the best music happening right out in the middle of the street!
If you asked me what I wanted to do most on my bachelorette party, my answer would have been ‘listen to amazing live music and dance.’ I just want to dance! I ended up doing both until my heart was content at Bamboula’s. It’s one of the newer venues on Frenchmen Street that has live music seven nights a week and has a question mark listed as their closing time. My kind of place.
The Sunshine Brass Band came on shortly after we arrived. It’s… hard to put into words how perfect this band was.
They’re a multi-piece brass band (think trumpet, trombone, tuba, etc.), but they play Top 40 hits. I’m telling you, you never realize how much your life has been missing Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ performed by brass band until you’re hearing Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ performed by brass band.
We sang and danced our faces off at Bamboula’s until the wee hours of the morning. I woke up on Sunday with blistery feet and no voice, souvenirs of a great night.
SUNDAY
We got home so late from our Saturday night party that we slept past noon on Sunday and ended up cancelling both our brunch at Commander’s Palace and the ghost tour we had planned on taking. Oops. When in Nola.
What we did do on Sunday when we finally left the house was give ourselves a DIY food tour of the Garden District. We stopped for beignets at New Orleans Coffee & Beignet Co., oysters at Cavan, and hot dogs at Dat Dog, a classic combination I like to call the ‘hangover trifecta.’
By that point it was already late afternoon, so we grabbed a few bottles of wine and headed back to the house where we relaxed on the couches, chatted and laughed the rest of the night.
MONDAY
Monday morning was for departures.
As the last one to leave I had a few minutes alone in the house. I sat on the front porch, had one last cup of coffee and chicory and reminisced on all the fun we’d had (a very ‘Real World’ moment). It was the perfect ending to a perfect girls’ weekend in New Orleans.
If you’re thinking of doing your bachelorette party in the Big Easy, I say absolutely go for it. It has plenty to do, top-notch food and music, and some of the friendliest locals you’ll ever meet. If you have questions about where to go and what to do, I’d love to give a shot at answering them! Just leave a comment below.
*UPDATE* We’re married! Read about our wedding in Florida here and honeymoon in Costa Rica here.
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