It’s More Expensive to Throw a Bachelor Party Than a Bachelorette Party

If you want Lee Abbamonte, a travel blogger in New York, to plan your bachelor party, it will cost you $1,000. Actually, that’s just for a consultation. To get him to make the arrangements will cost $5,000. Well, technically, it will cost $5,000 or 10 percent of the total cost of the event, whichever is higher. This is because, as he sees it, the bachelor party is “like a honeymoon for you and your buddies.” And as with any honeymoon, says Abbamonte, 37, who caters mostly to Wall Streeters, the costs add up: “It can be $1,000 to $10,000 per person. It can be more if you get some rich guy who wants to treat his friends to some crazy weekend somewhere, and they all stay at the presidential suite. Then you can be looking at a six-figure weekend.”

What was once an evening of debauchery—strip clubs, penis straws—has morphed into a longer, costlier affair. Now prenuptial gatherings often last three days and two nights, often in a far-flung location, says Kristen Maxwell Cooper, executive editor of wedding marketplace the Knot, which reports that 78 percent of brides and 75 percent of grooms celebrated last year with friends before the big day. “The shift came with the social media generation,” she says. “They’re more interested in experiences than things. It’s not just about one night out at a bar.”