Surviving A Stag Do: Our Ultimate Guide
- November 30, 2015
- John Strachan
A Stag Do is looming, and although you are very much up for some fun, you want to guarantee your humiliation is not too severe (groom or party member) and no bodily harm comes to you or your friends. Some prior co-ordination and planning is therefore necessary in order to ensure the enjoyment of the event for all parties involved. This guide will help you do so.
1. The Check List
Essentials for the night. As is expected, the anticipation for ‘the biggest night of the year’ has probably been building for some time. Therefore, it is imperative that you’re fully prepared for the events to come. You don’t want to ruin your night.
1. Identification. Preferably a drivers license, however your passport will do the trick (for any younger brothers, student cards do not count). Keys and wallet (if local) as you will need to exchange money for alcohol and inevitably need to sleep somewhere.
2. A trusty check-list isn’t completed without a fully charged phone. Throughout the night, you will invariably hit more than one bar/ location, and in your state of blissful unawareness, you may unintentionally split from the group for one reason or another (e.g. you’re lucky enough to have seen a potential suitor at the bar). At this point your phone is your lifeline. You haven’t a clue where your party has gone and you are in desperate need for another White Russian. Also a camera may be your best chance of remembering any of the events of the night.
2. Piece Of Mind
Aside from the essentials, there are some items you can bring with you in order to make life easier for you, whether it’s on the night or in bed the morning after.
1. A phone charger – if your stag do is over a weekend or a few days, a phone charger is a must. Trust us, this is an essential if your phone battery if as temperamental as ours.
2. Produce hard copies of your itinerary, booking confirmations and phone numbers as a precaution.
3. Bring some extra travellers cheques as emergency money. Keep them in a safe place and only refer to them if your wallet has gone walk about – this is not a beer fund.
4. Wet wipes may be an unlikely resource to consider, but when a man is so hung-over he cannot get out of bed, the wet wipe becomes a shower in a tissue and accelerates his journey from a back to manhood.
3. The 5 P’s
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. This chapter is directed towards the whole stag party, but with special emphasis on the groom. Here are our tips for some basic damage limitation.
1. Buddy Up. Whether it is the groom and best man, or other members of the party, it’s sensible that prior to the event you establish a partner that you can rely on to be there in your time of need. It is necessary that buddies have ‘the chat’ beforehand, especially best man and groom. This discussion outlines the limits at which the groom is prepared to go before it isn’t a joke and potentially ruins a relationship/friendship.
2. Leave plenty of time for the stag do before the wedding. As shown in the aptly named ‘Hangover’ movie, stag do’s may not always go the way you planned and as I’m sure you won’t lose your friend in Las Vegas and go on an event filled quest to find him, a few days before the wedding will allow you ample time to recover.
4. The Best Man’s Brainchild
As you may be aware, planning the stag do is not the only responsibility of the best man (search ‘best man guide’ for more information’). However, it may be the thing he most enjoys. His brief is simple: inundate participants with alcohol and then implement humiliating tasks for the groom. (See 16 Fiendish Stag Do Pranks’). However, that being said there are some considerations to be had.
1. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, if you are an unmarried best man, the likelihood is that you will one day be the groom in a stag do. What’s more, your best man may be the current groom. Therefore, consider carefully your plans for the night ahead, because rest assured, ‘giving it’ will result in you ‘taking it’ ten times worse further down the line. On the flip side, groom, if your best man is married, a certain amount of buttering up may be required, pre-stag-do, in order to avoid the more extreme scenarios he inevitably has planned.
2. Strippers. There are loads of reasons why you might not want a stripper in your stag do. This request may make you far less popular with the rest of your team however it may be the lesser of the two evils. An excuse such as ‘my wife wouldn’t like it’, ‘I’m a feminist’ or ‘I don’t want to be covered with whipped cream and smothered in 36G breasts’ might not cut it with them, but there may be serious consequence.
5. On The Guest List
If the night’s activities project a sense of fear into you, and ‘the chat’ didn’t fill you with confidence, there are actions you can take in order to protect yourself against some of the more severe atrocities.
1. Inform the best man you have invited your granddad, brother in-law, or even better, your new father in-law. If the best man believes some of the group may be mortally offended by some of the events or are at risk of a Myocardial Infarction when the stripper turns up, one would hope that the stag will respect you enough not to ruin family Christmas’s in years to come with his obscene antics.
2. Be aware that with modern day technology, the age old saying, ‘what goes on tour, stays on tour’ is not applicable. If there is a chance your family/employer will ever visit your social media page then be very careful when choosing your style of pose in front of the camera. Or, an extreme would be to ban the photo to ensure absolute confidentiality.
6. Recovery Mission
Inevitably, your physical state the morning after the night before will resemble more Hyde than Jekyll, however if you implement a strategic plan you may be able to resurface at a less ridiculous time and the speed of your recovery will be greatly accelerated.
1. Unsurprisingly, your first port of call must be your friend H2O. Leave a glass by your bedside pre-stag-do to ensure that your inebriated self may quench his thirst before ‘the drop’.
2. Caffeinated drinks such as tea and coffee may relieve you from your depression following a night of heavy drinking, however they will dehydrate you further. For a more specialist hangover remedy, try a honey/yoghurt/fruit smoothie, Alka Seltzer or Berocca
3. An extreme intake of liquids is all well and good, but may have an adverse effect on your blood sugar levels, therefore you must eat as soon as you can. Think energy-boosting substances such as a banana, eggs on toast or cereal.
4. If the session is as heavy as expected, go for 48 hours without alcohol, and don’t even consider a hair of the dog – it creates a vicious cycle
7. It’s Not Just About Boozing
And finally… It is wise to remember that a stag do isn’t all about the poison we call alcohol. There are loads of fantastic activities that you can do during the day that will really make for a memorable weekend away.
1. 4×4 Off-Roading, Clay Pigeon Shooting, Field Archery, Quad safari and Highland Games will always provide a laugh for you and your friends and will also split the weekend up nicely into different sections to prevent a monotone experience.
2. The best destinations for these activities in the UK are Edinburgh, Cardiff, Bristol, Brighton and London.
- Filed Under: Stag Party
