If you have searched this already, you know exactly what came back. Nashville, matching shirts, a bar crawl, and a listicle that is really just the straight version with the word "lesbian" stapled onto the front.

There are two problems with that, and the second one is bigger than the first.

The small problem is the bar. Nothing wrong with a bar! However, if that is not your people, or one of you does not drink, or the idea of standing up for 6 hours in a loud room sounds like a punishment, the standard list has nothing left to offer you. Only 6 of the 100 ideas below involve nightlife at all, and not one of them is a bar crawl.

The big problem is the shape. If there are two brides, you may be planning two parties. Or one party with two friend groups who have never met. There is definitely more than one person who currently believes she is in charge. No general bachelorette list addresses any of that.

So this one is sorted by shape, not by vibe. Sections 1 and 2 are the ones that structurally require two brides, and honestly they are the reason this page exists. The rest are strong ideas arranged so you can pull from them once you know what shape your weekend is.

100 of them. Take 4.

1. Only possible with two brides (1–14)

1. Team Her vs. Team Her trivia. Each squad answers questions about the other bride. The bride can only sit there and watch her people flounder.
2. She Said / She Said. Both brides answer the same question at once and the room adjudicates the mismatches. The shoe game, doubled.
3. Merger bingo. "Find someone who was at the first date." Everyone leaves knowing 10 names they did not know at breakfast.
4. Draft night. The two squads draft each other's friends onto mixed teams for the weekend's activities.
5. Two Truths and a U-Haul. Each bride offers 3 claims about the relationship and one is invented.
6. Who fell harder. A scored round settling it once and for all, with evidence admitted from the group.
7. The origin story, reconstructed. The room reassembles how they met from the fragments each guest was told at the time. The versions never match.
8. Whose friend said it. Anonymous quotes about the couple, and you guess which squad produced it.
9. Split-then-merge day. Each squad does its own morning, both converge for dinner. This is the single best format for two very different friend groups.
10. The surprise swap. Each bride secretly plans one hour of the other's day.
11. Dueling playlists. Two queues, alternating songs, and the room votes at the end.
12. A two-squad photo list. A structured shot list that is not the same 12 poses every bachelorette produces.
13. Matching-but-not shirts. Each squad in its own color, both brides in a third. It photographs beautifully and it answers the "whose party is this" question without anybody having to say anything.
14. Two cakes. Each squad brings one for the other bride. Yes, it is silly. Do it anyway.

2. Coordination moves that save the weekend (15–22)

15. A co-captain call. The two maids of honor talk BEFORE anything is booked. Most two-bride bachelorette problems trace directly back to this call not happening.
16. A shared budget doc, visible to both squads. Written numbers prevent the resentment that builds quietly.
17. A price ceiling announced up front. "Nothing over $400 total" lets people say yes honestly.
18. The surprise equalizer. A deliberate check that one bride is not accidentally getting the bigger party.
19. A date-collision check. Two parties, one wedding, one social circle — put all 3 on one calendar before anyone books a flight.
20. A guest-list overlap list. Anyone invited to both parties is paying twice. Know who they are.
21. A single group chat, not three. Three chats is how information gets lost.
22. A printed run sheet on the fridge. Nobody reads a group chat at 9am. Everyone reads the fridge. (All of the above live in our Coordination Planner.)

3. Daytime adventures (23–34)

23. A hike with a destination. Not a walk — pick something with a waterfall, a lake, or a view at the end, so there is a natural place to stop and take the photo.
24. Kayak or paddleboard rental. Usually $20–$40 per person for 2 hours, and it forces conversation because you are stuck 3 feet from somebody.
25. A day at a state park with a rented shelter. Under $50 for the whole group in most states. This is the best value on the entire page.
26. Rock climbing gym day pass. Great for a mixed-fitness group because everyone climbs her own route.
27. A horseback trail ride. These book up fast in summer, so this one wants 6 weeks of lead time.
28. Bike the rail trail. Rentals, one long flat path, and a place to eat at the halfway point.
29. Thrift crawl. Give every guest $15 and 90 minutes to find the brides the worst possible gift.
30. Botanical garden or conservatory. Warm in January, beautiful year round, and quiet enough to actually talk.
31. Roller skating. Rink, rented skates, 1990s music. It is impossible to be self-conscious on skates.
32. An escape room, squads split into two teams. If there are two friend groups, this mixes them faster than anything else here.
33. A minor league ball game with a group section. Cheap, loud, and nobody has to pay attention the whole time.
34. Sunrise hot air balloon. Often $200+ each. Put it on the list and let people opt in.

4. Make something (35–44)

35. Pottery class. Everyone leaves with an ugly mug that they will keep for 10 years.
36. Screen printing your own shirts. More fun than ordering them, roughly the same cost, and it is an activity AND a souvenir out of one line item.
37. Candle or perfume blending. Each bride makes the other one's scent, which is a genuinely lovely thing to hand over.
38. Flower crowns or bouquet-making. Buy wholesale flowers and skip the studio fee entirely.
39. A painting class where everyone paints the two brides. The results will be horrifying. That is the point.
40. A group tattoo appointment. Only if the whole group is actually in, and only at a shop you have vetted. The softer version is temporary ones.
41. A one-afternoon scrapbook or zine. Guests bring 2 photos each and it gets assembled that day rather than "someday."
42. A ceramics-painting studio. The low-skill version of pottery and just as good.
43. Build the wedding playlist together. A shared queue, one song each, and everyone has to defend her pick.
44. A skills swap. Every guest teaches one 10-minute thing she is good at.

5. Food, without it being about drinking (45–54)

45. A cooking class. Pasta making is the reliable one — hands busy, low skill floor, and you eat what you made.
46. A private chef in the rental house. Split 10 ways it is frequently cheaper than a nice restaurant, and nobody drives.
47. Brunch as the main event. Book the big table, order everything, and be finished by 2pm.
48. A taco or dumpling assembly line at home. Everyone gets a station.
49. A food tour of one neighborhood. Usually 3–5 stops on foot, and the guide handles all the logistics.
50. Dessert crawl. Bakeries instead of bars. Same walking, same photos, no hangover.
51. A structured tasting that is not alcohol. Cheese, chocolate, olive oil, 6 kinds of hot sauce. Structure is what makes tastings fun, not the alcohol.
52. Fancy tea service. Underrated, extremely photogenic, and the rare activity where dressing up IS the event.
53. A themed dinner with a dress code. The dress code is what elevates it above "dinner."
54. Breakfast in bed for both brides, executed by both squads.

6. Destination weekends (55–68)

55. A cabin with a hot tub. The default for a reason. Book 4–6 months out for a summer weekend.
56. A lake house. Better than a cabin if your group is big, because there are more places to spread out.
57. A beach house in the off season. Half the price, empty sand, and you can hear each other.
58. Glamping. A pre-set canvas tent removes the exact part of camping that people hate.
59. A hot springs trip. Long, slow, quiet, and it suits a group that does not want a schedule.
60. A mountain town.
61. A vineyard region — rent a house there rather than building the trip around tastings.
62. Palm Springs.
63. New Orleans.
64. Provincetown.
65. Asheville.
66. A ski or snowboard weekend. Not everyone has to ski. The lodge is the actual venue.
67. A national park with one big hike as the anchor. Build the whole weekend around a single event.
68. A small city neither bride has been to. No nostalgia, no expectations, and everything is new for everybody.

7. Restorative and low-key (69–78)

69. A spa day with the appointments booked as a consecutive block so the group stays together.
70. Sauna and cold plunge. Strange, bonding, and increasingly easy to find.
71. A private yoga or movement class at the rental. Instructors will travel for about $150–$250.
72. A silent morning. Everyone up, coffee, nobody talks until 10am. It sounds absurd and it works beautifully.
73. Letters for the hard days. Sealed letters from the people who love them, opened years later.
74. Prediction cards about the marriage, sealed and opened on an anniversary.
75. A massage train and a movie. The lowest-effort item on this page, and nobody has ever complained about it.
76. A book or letter-writing hour.
77. A slumber party, unironically. Sleeping bags in one room, snacks, 2 hours of talking in the dark. Adults love this and will not admit it.
78. A protected block where the plan is explicitly nothing. Put it on the run sheet so nobody fills it.

8. Stay home and make it an event (79–86)

79. Backyard movie with a projector. A $90 projector and a bedsheet turns a yard into a venue.
80. A games night with a running order. Not a pile of boxes — a schedule, with a start and an end. That structure is exactly what our game bundle is built around.
81. A murder mystery night with assigned characters. The brides should NOT be the detectives.
82. A puzzle left out on a table for people to drift toward.
83. Superlative ballots filled out across the whole weekend, awards handed out at the last dinner.
84. A pizza night where every guest builds one.
85. Advice roulette. Best and worst marriage advice, drawn at random and defended out loud.
86. A house party with a real playlist and a real theme.

9. Nightlife, done well (87–92)

87. A private karaoke room. The private room is the whole trick.
88. A drag show with a booked table. Arrive early and tip your performers generously.
89. A dance class instead of a dance floor.
90. A comedy show.
91. A queer bar you have actually researched, on a night when something is happening.
92. A late-night diner run as the planned ending, rather than the accident.

10. WOW tier, if the budget exists (93–100)

93. A rented houseboat.
94. A charter sail for a day.
95. A private photographer for 2 hours of the weekend.
96. A live musician at the rental for one evening.
97. An international long weekend.
98. A wellness retreat booked as a group.
99. A stylist session so both brides get their wedding-week look sorted.
100. A hired local guide for something genuinely unusual — foraging, ghost tours, tide pools, whatever the place is actually known for.

How to use 100 ideas without ruining a weekend

You do not need 100 ideas. You need 4, and one of them should be a nap.

Here is the density that works. For a 2-night weekend: 3 anchor activities, 4 planned meals, and 2 large protected blocks of nothing. For a single day: 1 anchor, 1 meal, 1 games hour. Every item you add past that comes directly out of the part people actually remember, which is the sitting-around-talking part.

Picking 12 of these is the most common mistake I see, and it turns a celebration into a forced march.

There is one question sitting underneath all of it, though, and it changes which ideas even apply: are you planning one party or two? Settle that before you book anything.

And the rule underneath everything else: the best plans make the brides feel adored, not hazed. If an idea on this page is going to land wrong in your room, pull it before the weekend rather than during.

Summary

• Sections 1 and 2 are the two-bride specific ones. Start there, then fill in from the rest.
• The co-captain call is the highest-leverage item on this page and it costs $0.
• Correct density: 3 anchors for a weekend, 1 for a day. Protect the unscheduled time on purpose.
• Announce a price ceiling early so guests can say yes honestly.
• Only 6 of these involve nightlife. You are not missing anything by skipping the bar.
• Adored, not hazed. Every single time.

If one of you wants a cabin and 8 people and a hot tub, and the other one wants a city and 20 people and a dance floor until 2am, you do not have a scheduling problem. You have a preferences problem, and those are the ones that get solved badly, usually by one person quietly folding.

I want to say something clearly before the practical part. A mismatch is not a bad sign. It is not a compatibility warning and it is not something to fix. You are two different people who like different things, which is presumably part of why this is happening at all!

However, the wedding industry has no script for it, because the standard script assumes one bride and one party. So here is a real one.

First: name which kind of mismatch you have

Not all disagreements are the same, and the fix depends entirely on which one you are in.

1. A vibe mismatch. Quiet versus loud, small versus big, structured versus loose. This is the most common one and it is the most solvable.

2. A guest-list mismatch. One of you has 6 close friends and the other has 22. This one is really about money and logistics wearing a personality costume.

3. A budget mismatch. One squad can absorb a $900 weekend and the other cannot. Never, ever paper over this one.

4. A comfort mismatch. One of you does not drink, or does not want strippers, or is not out at work and cannot have 40 photos posted. This one is not a preference and it does not get negotiated. It gets accommodated.

If you are in category 4, stop reading the compromise section and go straight to two parties, or to a joint party built entirely around the constraint. Comfort is not a tiebreaker item.

The four shapes that actually work

Shape 1: Two separate parties

The cleanest answer, and I think it is underrated because people worry it looks like a failure. It is not. Each bride gets the weekend she wants with the people she wants, planned by the person who knows her best.

What it costs: anyone invited to both is paying twice, which is the number-one source of quiet resentment. Make that list before you send anything, and consider explicitly telling overlap guests that attending one is completely fine.

Best for: budget mismatches, guest-list mismatches, and any couple where the two friend groups genuinely have nothing in common.

Shape 2: One joint party, split down the middle

One weekend, one house, one bill. However, the days are split — Saturday morning belongs to one bride's plan and Saturday afternoon belongs to the other's. Everyone attends everything.

This is the shape I would recommend to most couples in a vibe mismatch. It is cheaper than two parties, the squads actually mix, and neither of you spends the whole weekend at somebody else's event.

The trick that makes it work: each bride plans the other bride's block. It sounds backwards and it produces a much better weekend, because nobody is planning around their own preferences.

Shape 3: One joint weekend with an opt-in night

The whole group does the daytime together. Then Saturday night forks — 10 people go dancing and 8 people stay at the house with a fire and a card game, and NOBODY has to explain their choice. Both brides pick their own fork.

Best for: big age ranges, mixed drinking, and groups where 3 people have small children at home and are asleep by 10.

Shape 4: Two parties, one shared bookend

Two separate weekends, plus one dinner that both squads attend a few weeks before the wedding. You get the separate parties and you still solve the "these 40 people meet for the first time at the rehearsal" problem.

Best for: couples in different cities, and second weddings where a full joint weekend is more than anybody wants.

The conversation that settles it

Do this one before any date is picked, and do it with your maids of honor in the room, because they are the ones who will be executing it.

1. Each bride writes down her ideal weekend privately. 5 minutes, no discussion, no editing for the other person. This step is doing more work than it looks like it is.
2. Read them out loud. Do not respond yet.
3. Circle the overlap. There is almost always more than you expected — usually the food, the house, and the fact that you both want a specific 4 people there.
4. Name the non-negotiable. Each of you gets exactly ONE. Not four. One.
5. Pick a shape from the list above that protects both non-negotiables. If no shape protects both, that is your answer: two parties.
6. Set the ceiling. One number, said out loud, before anybody looks at a rental listing.

That is a 30-minute conversation and it will save you 3 months of drift.

The thing to avoid

The failure mode is not disagreement. It is the polite concession — one bride says "no, honestly, whatever you want is fine," and means it at the time, and then spends a weekend at a party that was not for her, being told to smile. That is worse than any argument you would have had in step 4.

If you catch yourself doing it, say so. And if you catch her doing it, do not let her.

For the full decision framework including budget models and the co-captain script, our guide on joint or separate parties goes deeper, and the Coordination Planner has the worksheets.

Summary

• A mismatch is normal. It is not a warning sign about the marriage.
• Identify which of the 4 mismatch types you have — comfort mismatches are not negotiable and go straight to accommodation.
• The 4 workable shapes: two separate parties, one party split down the middle, one weekend with an opt-in night, or two parties plus a shared dinner.
• If you go joint and split, have each bride plan the OTHER bride's block.
• Every bride gets one non-negotiable. Exactly one.
• The real enemy is the polite concession, not the argument.

If the bachelorette is the party, the shower is the ritual, and the two get confused constantly. A shower is daytime, it is usually multigenerational, your aunt is there, and there are gifts. That is a completely different event with completely different rules, and it is the one where the traditional script fits a two-bride couple the worst.

Here is why. The entire premise of a bridal shower is that a group of women gather to prepare ONE woman for a marriage to a man. Two brides breaks that at the foundation, not at the edges. So most of the "adapt it" advice you find online amounts to changing pronouns on a game about how well you know your husband.

You can do much better than that, and it is not hard.

First: what shape is your shower?

Decide this before anything else, because the theme, the guest list, and the games all follow from it.

1. One shower, both brides. The most common choice and usually the right one. One guest list, one afternoon, both brides opening gifts. It is efficient and it lets both families meet before the wedding day.

2. Two showers, hosted separately. Each bride's side hosts her own. Best when the families are geographically far apart, or when one family is further along in their acceptance than the other and you want to protect a good day from becoming a difficult one.

3. A couple's shower. All genders invited, more of a party than a ceremony, often in the evening. Removes the "women in a living room" framing entirely.

4. No shower, one dinner instead. Increasingly popular and entirely legitimate. If gifts are not the point and neither of you wants to be watched opening them, skip it.

I have a full breakdown of the one-versus-two question in a separate post, because it deserves its own answer.

12 themes that work for two brides

1. Garden party. Daytime, outdoors, flowers, and it is the rare theme that suits a group aged 8 to 88.
2. Brunch and bubbles. The default for a reason. Easy, cheap, and finished by 2pm.
3. Around the clock. Each guest is assigned a time of day and brings a gift for it. Works beautifully for two brides because you can assign 24 hours across a bigger group.
4. Stock the bar. Guests bring one bottle and one recipe card. (Obviously skip if either bride does not drink.)
5. Stock the kitchen. Same structure, better for most couples honestly — one tool and one recipe each, handwritten.
6. Recipe shower. Every guest brings a family recipe card. Both brides leave with a box. This is the one people cry at.
7. Books for the shelf. Each guest brings a book with a note written inside the cover. Cheap, personal, and the gift keeps meaning something.
8. Plant and pot party. Guests bring cuttings from their own plants. You end up with a home full of things that came from people who love you.
9. Home bar / coffee bar. Whichever ritual the two of you actually have.
10. Tea party, done properly. Dress code, real china, and it gives the older guests an event they genuinely enjoy.
11. Paint and sip, or paint and don't. The activity does the work so the conversation does not have to be forced.
12. Honeymoon fund shower. Instead of household gifts, each guest funds one specific thing — a dinner, a night, an excursion — and writes a card about it.

Games that do not assume a groom

This is where standard shower content fails hardest, and it is the easiest thing to fix.

Skip these entirely: "How well do you know the groom," anything about the husband's habits, and the one where the bride is quizzed on cooking and cleaning. That last one is a 1950s artifact and it plays badly at any shower in 2026.

Play these instead:

• She Said / She Said. Both brides answer the same question at once and the room adjudicates the mismatches. The shoe game, doubled, and it is the single best two-bride shower game there is.
• The timeline game. Guests race to put the couple's story in order — first date, first trip, the move, the proposal.
• Two truths and a U-Haul. Each bride offers 3 claims about the relationship and one is invented.
• The origin story, reconstructed. The room reassembles how they met from the fragments each guest was told at the time. The versions never match, which is the joke.
• Advice cards. Every guest writes one piece of marriage advice. Read the best 5 out loud.
• Recipe or memory cards filled out at the table, collected into a box for the brides.
• Guess who said it. Quotes from both brides, and the room guesses which one.

Most of these are in our free Mini Game Pack, and they work in a living room at 2pm just as well as they work at a bachelorette.

Hosting details that make a shower better

Who hosts. Traditionally not the immediate family, though that rule has largely dissolved. With two brides the graceful version is one host from each side, which also quietly makes the day belong to both families equally.

Length. Two and a half hours. Genuinely. Showers that run 4 hours are showers where the last 90 minutes are people waiting to leave politely.

The gift-opening problem. With two brides you can be sitting there for 45 minutes opening 30 gifts while everyone watches. Fix it one of three ways: open a curated 6 in front of everyone and the rest later, alternate brides so it moves faster, or set up a display table and skip the ceremony entirely.

Seating. Whatever you do, do not put both brides in matching thrones facing the room. Sit within the group. It changes the whole temperature of the afternoon.

The family variable. If one bride's family is still adjusting, brief your host in advance about what is off the table and who to redirect. One prepared person can quietly manage a whole afternoon, and it is a kindness worth arranging.

Registry framing. Say "the brides are registered at" — plural, on the invitation, in the wording, everywhere. Small thing. Sets the tone for every guest before they walk in.

Summary

• Pick your shape first: one joint shower, two separate ones, a couple's shower, or a dinner instead.
• The best themes give guests something to bring that means something — recipes, books, plant cuttings, a piece of the honeymoon.
• Cut any game built around a groom or around domestic quizzing. She Said / She Said is the direct two-bride replacement.
• One host from each side makes the day belong to both families.
• Two and a half hours, and solve gift-opening before it becomes 45 minutes of watching.
• Write "the brides" in the plural everywhere, starting with the invitation.

If you want the short answer: one joint shower, unless one of five specific things is true. I will give you the five, and I will give you the reasoning, because the default advice on this ("do what feels right for you!") is not advice at all.

Here is the case for joint, plainly. A shower is a gift event, and gifts to a couple are for a household you are both going to live in. Two showers means two guest lists, two afternoons, two hosts, and — this is the important part — a meaningful number of people who are invited to both and will feel obligated to give twice. That last cost is invisible on the planning spreadsheet and extremely visible in your friends' bank accounts.

However, there are real situations where two showers is not just acceptable but clearly better.

The five reasons to have separate showers

1. The families are geographically far apart

If your family is in one state and hers is 1,200 miles away, a joint shower means somebody's grandmother is not coming. Two local showers means both sets of people who love you actually get to be there. This is the most common good reason and it needs no further justification.

2. One family is not there yet

If one bride's family is still adjusting to the marriage, a joint shower can put that tension in a room with people who are entirely happy for you. Two showers lets one day be uncomplicated. It is not hiding and it is not conceding anything — it is choosing not to make one afternoon carry a job it cannot do.

I would add one thing gently. If you go this route, decide it deliberately rather than drifting into it, and make sure both brides are genuinely on board. A shower that quietly exists to keep one bride out of a room is a different thing than a shower that protects a good day.

3. Very different guest lists with no overlap

If your circle is 6 close friends and hers is 30 relatives, one shower is going to feel like her shower with you in attendance. Two smaller ones give each of you a room that is actually yours.

4. The showers are genuinely different events

Sometimes one bride wants a garden brunch with her aunts and the other wants a loud evening with a bar cart. Those are two events, not one event with a compromise, and forcing them together produces something neither of you wanted.

5. One of you does not want a shower at all

This is a completely valid position and it does not obligate the other bride to skip hers. One shower, one bride, no explanation owed to anybody.

If none of those five apply, do one shower

And do it properly, because a joint shower has one advantage that two separate ones can never have: both families meet before the wedding day.

That is worth more than people realize. The rehearsal dinner is a bad place for 40 strangers to become acquainted, and the ceremony is worse. A shower is daytime, low stakes, 2.5 hours, and everyone is in a good mood. It is the best merger opportunity on the entire calendar.

The double-gifting problem, and how to actually solve it

This is the real cost of two showers and almost nobody addresses it directly.

Make the overlap list first. Write down every person who would be invited to both showers, plus both bachelorettes, plus the wedding. Look at that number. Those people are being asked for 3 or 4 gifts and possibly 2 flights.

Then do one of these:

• Say it on the invitation. "Please join us — and please do not feel obligated to bring a gift to both." People need permission in writing, not implied.
• Invite overlap guests to one shower only, and tell them warmly which one and why.
• Use one registry across both showers, so the gifts do not duplicate even if the guests do.
• Make one of them gift-free entirely. A tea, a lunch, a "come meet her people" afternoon with no registry attached at all.

Any of these works. Doing nothing does not.

The hybrid nobody suggests

There is a fifth option that gets skipped constantly, and I think it is the best answer for a lot of couples in reason 1 or reason 3.

Two small gatherings, one shared registry, and no second gift expectation. One is a real shower. The other is a lunch or a tea — same people, same warmth, explicitly no gifts. Each bride's side gets its own afternoon, nobody pays twice, and it costs a fraction of two full showers.

If you have the budget and the calendar, the other hybrid is two showers plus one small joint dinner a few weeks before the wedding, which solves the families-meeting problem that separate showers otherwise leaves unsolved.

Five questions that will settle it in 10 minutes

1. Would a joint shower mean somebody important cannot travel to it? (Yes → lean separate.)
2. Is there a family situation that needs one day protected? (Yes → separate.)
3. How many people are on the overlap list? (A lot → lean joint, or make one gift-free.)
4. Do both brides actually want a shower? (No → one shower, and that is fine.)
5. Have your two families met? (No → this is the strongest argument for joint that exists.)

If you answered no to 1 and 2 and your families have not met, stop deliberating. Have one shower.

Once you have decided, our shower ideas post covers themes, games that do not assume a groom, and the hosting details. And if you are working through the same question for the bachelorette, that one has its own guide — the answers are not always the same, and they do not have to match.

Summary

• Default to one joint shower. It is cheaper for your guests and it gets both families in a room before the wedding.
• Go separate if: the families are far apart, one family needs a day protected, the guest lists have no overlap, the two events are genuinely different, or one bride does not want one.
• The hidden cost of two showers is double gifting. Make the overlap list and then actively fix it.
• The best hybrid: one real shower plus one explicitly gift-free gathering, sharing a single registry.
• Your shower answer and your bachelorette answer do not have to be the same.

If one or both of you does not drink, the standard bachelorette template collapses immediately, because that template is essentially a drinking schedule with a hotel attached. Wine tour, brunch mimosas, bar crawl, hungover breakfast. Remove the alcohol and there is nothing structurally holding the weekend together.

That is actually good news. It means you are not "missing" anything — you just have to supply the structure yourself, and the structure was always the fun part.

I want to be careful here, because "does not drink" covers a lot of different situations. You might be in recovery. You might be pregnant. You might be on a medication, or you might just not like it. Those are very different circumstances and they call for different levels of hosting care, which I will get to at the end. First, the actual plan.

The one principle that makes a sober bachelorette work

Alcohol does a specific job at a party: it lowers the barrier to talking to people you do not know well. If you remove it, you have to do that job another way, and the way is shared activity.

So the rule is simple. Every block of the weekend should have a thing people are DOING. Not a room people are sitting in hoping something happens. A group standing around a kitchen island with nothing to do and nothing to drink is the actual failure mode, and it is entirely preventable.

30 activities that carry a weekend

Anchors — big enough to build a day around (1–10)

1. A cooking class or a private chef night. Hands busy, everyone eats, and it takes 3 hours in the best way.
2. A pottery or ceramics-painting studio. Everyone leaves with an object. Objects beat photos.
3. Kayaking or paddleboarding. Usually $20–$40 per person and impossible to do badly.
4. A hike with a real destination — a waterfall, a lake, a view.
5. Spa day with the appointments booked as a consecutive block so the group stays together.
6. Escape room, split into two teams. If there are two friend groups, this mixes them faster than anything else on the page.
7. Roller skating. Nobody is self-conscious on skates. Nobody.
8. A day at a state park with a rented shelter. Under $50 for the whole group in most states.
9. A group class you would never take alone — pole, aerial, salsa, drumming, glassblowing.
10. A sauna and cold plunge afternoon. Strange, bonding, and increasingly easy to find.

Mid-size — good for an afternoon or an evening (11–20)

11. Private karaoke room. 12. A drag show, booked table, arriving early, tipping well. 13. A themed dinner with a dress code. 14. A dessert crawl — same walking and photos as a bar crawl, none of the drinking. 15. Fancy tea service. 16. A movie projector in the backyard. 17. Thrift crawl with $15 each and a mission. 18. A structured tasting that is not alcohol — chocolate, hot sauce, olive oil, 6 kinds of cheese. 19. Mini golf or an arcade with a real tournament bracket. 20. A mocktail class, which is a genuinely good time when the recipes are ambitious rather than apologetic.

Fillers — for the gaps, which is where sober parties die (21–30)

21. A games hour with a running order, not a pile of boxes. 22. Superlative ballots filled out across the whole weekend, awards at the last dinner. 23. A puzzle left out on a table for people to drift toward. 24. A group playlist everyone adds to and has to defend. 25. Letters for the hard days — sealed, opened years later. 26. A structured photo list so the pictures happen on purpose. 27. Breakfast made by the guests for the brides. 28. A skills swap — every guest teaches one 10-minute thing. 29. Prediction cards about the marriage, sealed for an anniversary. 30. A protected quiet block where the plan is explicitly nothing.

Number 21 is the one I would not skip. Games are what alcohol was doing, and they do it better. Our free Mini Game Pack is 10 pages and it prints on ordinary paper, and everything in it works stone cold sober.

Hosting a mixed group without making it a whole thing

Most groups are mixed. Some people drink, some do not, and the goal is that nobody has to explain themselves at any point in the weekend.

Do this:

• Stock the non-alcoholic options as though they matter, because they do. Not a lone bottle of diet soda behind the beer. Good NA beer, a couple of interesting sodas, sparkling water in more than one flavor, and the ingredients for 2 real mocktails.
• Make the toast drink universal. If the toast is champagne, half your toast is performative. Pick something everyone actually has in hand.
• Put the activity in the itinerary, not the venue. "Roller skating at 3" rather than "we will figure out dinner and see where the night goes."
• Never announce whose party it is dry for. If a bride is in recovery, or pregnant, or simply does not want it discussed, the plan should just quietly be the plan. The guests do not need a reason.
• Brief the maid of honor once, privately, on what the actual boundary is. She is your buffer for the one guest who asks.

Do NOT do this:

• Do not build a "dry weekend" identity around it. The weekend is about two people getting married.
• Do not make the sober bride the designated driver by default. That is a demotion at her own party.
• Do not schedule a wine tour and tell yourself she can just do the food pairing.

If a bride is in recovery, one more layer

This is worth handling with more care than a preference, and I would say three things. Ask her directly and early what she wants, rather than guessing generously. Choose venues where alcohol is not the center of gravity, so she is not managing it all weekend. And make sure at least one other person in the group knows the plan, so she is not the only one holding it.

That conversation is 10 minutes and it is the difference between a party she attends and a party that is hers.

Summary

• Alcohol's real job at a party is lowering the barrier to talking. Replace it with shared activity, not with substitutes.
• Every block of the weekend needs a thing people are DOING. Unstructured standing around is where sober parties fail.
• Build from 3 anchors, fill the gaps with games and small rituals.
• Stock the non-alcoholic options properly, and make the toast drink one everyone can hold.
• Never announce who the weekend is dry for, and never make the sober bride the default driver.
• If recovery is involved, ask her directly, pick venues where drinking is not the center, and make sure she is not the only one holding the plan.

If you have gone looking for bachelorette shirts for a two-bride wedding, you already know what the problem is. Nearly every design in existence is built around one bride and a group of bridesmaids. "Bride" and "Bride Tribe." One special shirt and 9 supporting shirts.

You have two special shirts. You may also have two entire friend groups who have never met, which is a design problem AND a logistics problem at the same time.

This is a solvable thing and it does not require paying a designer. Here is everything I would want to know before ordering.

The four wording approaches that actually work

1. Identical for both brides. Both shirts say the same thing — "Bride," "Mrs.," "Wife," whatever. Simple, symmetrical, and it photographs cleanly. The risk is that in a group photo you cannot tell who is who, which matters more than you would think when the photos go up later.

2. Paired but not identical. "Bride" and "Also Bride" is the most common version, and it gets a laugh every single time. Other pairs that work: "Mrs." and "Mrs.", "Wifey" and "Wifey for Lifey" (if that is your humor), "She Said Yes" and "So Did She."

3. Named. Both brides' first names, or both names with the date. This is the version that ages the best. In 10 years a shirt that says "Bride" is a costume and a shirt with two names and a date is a keepsake.

4. Inside joke. The strongest option by a mile if you have one. Nothing off a shelf will ever beat a shirt that means something only to the 14 people wearing it.

For the guests, the phrase you want is usually "Brides' Squad" or "Team [Name] & [Name]" rather than "Bride Tribe," which has fallen out of favor for reasons worth reading about separately.

Solving the two-squad problem visually

If both friend groups are in the same room, the shirts can do real work. This is my favorite trick on this page.

Give each squad a different color, and put both brides in a third. So 8 people in sage, 9 people in rust, and 2 people in cream. It looks intentional in photos, it tells you at a glance who came with whom, and it quietly answers the "whose party is this" question without anybody having to say anything.

The alternative — everyone in the same color — is fine and cheaper, but it loses the story.

Do NOT do the thing where one squad's shirts are noticeably nicer than the other's. That is a small detail that lands as a big one, and it is the same failure the surprise equalizer exists to prevent.

What to actually search for

The keyword problem is real, because the good listings and the bad listings use nearly identical words. Search these and you will get much better results than searching "bachelorette shirts":

• two brides bachelorette shirts
• lesbian bachelorette shirts
• bride and bride shirts
• mrs and mrs bachelorette
• she said yes so did she
• lgbtq bachelorette party shirts
• custom brides squad shirts (for the named versions)

When you find a seller you like, look for the ones offering custom listings, because that is how you get two colors and a third bride color from one shop with matching print quality across all of it.

What to check before you order (this is the part people skip)

Timing. Custom apparel is 2–3 weeks for production plus shipping, and rush fees are real. If your party is in 4 weeks you are already close to the line. Order at 6–8 weeks out and you will never think about it again.

Sizing. Order the full size range from ONE shop, one blank brand, one style. Different shops use different blanks and a medium is not a medium across them. Ask the seller which blank they print on (Bella+Canvas, Comfort Colors and Gildan are the common ones) and check that brand's own size chart, not the shop's.

Also — collect sizes in writing from every guest, all at once, with a deadline. Chasing 3 people for 2 weeks is how this goes wrong.

Print method. Screen printing lasts longest and needs a minimum quantity. Direct-to-garment handles complex designs and small runs but fades faster. Vinyl looks great and cracks. For a group of 15 wearing them once, any of these is fine — for the keepsake shirts the brides will actually keep, ask for screen print or DTG on a heavyweight blank.

Price. Expect roughly $18–$32 per shirt for a custom group order, less if you are buying 20 or more. Anything under $12 is usually a thin blank you will not wear twice.

Who pays. Say it out loud early. The common convention is guests pay for their own and the brides' shirts are covered by the squads, but there is no rule. Just do not let it be discovered at checkout.

The cheaper option that is genuinely better sometimes

Screen print them yourselves as one of the weekend activities. A studio session usually runs $40–$60 per person, everyone makes their own, and you get the shirt AND an anchor activity out of one line item. The shirts will be imperfect. That has never once mattered.

What I would skip

Sashes over shirts, if you have to choose — sashes photograph as a costume and shirts photograph as a group. Anything that says "Last Fling Before the Ring," which does not really apply and never sounded good anyway. And veils on the brides at the bachelorette, unless you are both in on it, because with two brides it frequently ends up being one of you in the costume and one of you standing next to her.

Summary

• Four wording routes: identical, paired ("Bride" / "Also Bride"), named with the date, or an inside joke. Named ages the best.
• Two squads, two colors, brides in a third. It answers the "whose party" question visually.
• Order 6–8 weeks out. Custom apparel is 2–3 weeks plus shipping.
• One shop, one blank, one style for the whole order, and check the blank brand's size chart.
• Budget $18–$32 per shirt for custom group orders.
• Collect sizes in writing with a deadline, and settle who pays before anyone checks out.
• Screen printing them yourselves counts as an activity and a souvenir at the same time.

If you are planning a two-bride wedding, you have already had the moment I am talking about. You are reading a checklist somebody wrote a decade ago, and it says the bride does this and the groom does that, and there are two brides at your kitchen table and neither one of you is the groom. So the checklist just stops working, usually somewhere around item 4.

Here is what nobody says out loud: almost every one of those traditions is optional, and it always was. The rules were never rules. They were a script, written for a cast of two that does not match your cast of two. That is not a problem you have to solve. That is a permission slip!

However, "do whatever you want" is genuinely unhelpful advice when you are 7 months out and your mother has opinions. So I sorted the big ones into 3 piles instead. Steal, change, ignore.

Pile 1: Steal these (they work with zero edits)

1. Something old, new, borrowed, and blue. With two brides you do not get 4 slots, you get 8. That is 8 chances to put a person you love into what you are wearing. My favorite version of this: each of you secretly assembles the other one's four. You will find out what she chose about 20 minutes before the ceremony, which is exactly when you want to be crying anyway.

2. The first look. This one is not just fine, it is BETTER with two brides. You are both getting ready. You both have a room full of people and a dress or a suit or both and somebody doing your hair. A traditional first look has one person waiting and one person arriving. Yours has two people arriving. If you only steal one thing off this entire list, steal this one.

3. Vows you wrote yourself. The standard liturgical scripts assume a husband and a wife, so you were going to have to edit them regardless. Do not treat that as a chore. Treat it as the reason your ceremony will not sound like everyone else's.

4. The exit. Sparklers, bubbles, rice, a tunnel of people making noise at you. There is nothing gendered in it at all, it photographs beautifully, and it solves the awkward "is it over?" problem that flattens the end of a lot of receptions.

5. Whatever your own family or culture actually does. If your grandmother has a thing, do the thing. This is different from shopping other people's heritage for a ceremony aesthetic — jumping the broom, for instance, carries a specific history in Black American weddings and is not a cute add-on for a couple with no connection to it. Borrow from your own line. It will mean more and it will cost you nothing.

Pile 2: Change these (good bones, wrong assumptions)

6. Who walks you down the aisle. The original version is a father handing over property, which is a rough origin story even for the couples it was designed for. The modern useful version is simply: who do you want beside you in the longest 90 seconds of the day? Some options that work well for two brides — you each walk with a parent from opposite sides, you walk down together from the back, one of you goes first and waits, or you both skip the aisle entirely and are already standing there when guests arrive. There is no default here, which means there is no wrong answer.

7. The wedding party. Bridesmaids and groomsmen is a sorting system based on a thing that does not apply to you. Sort by whose person they are instead. If you are worried about the visual imbalance (one of you has 6 people and the other has 3), the fix is a mixed processional, not making somebody add a friend she likes less. And yes, people can be in both.

8. The "don't see each other before the wedding" rule. If you are getting ready in the same house, this rule will run your entire morning, and it will run it badly. Change it to something narrower: no seeing the outfit. That is really what anybody cares about. You can eat breakfast together.

9. The first dance. Keep it, but move it. If you are both nervous about it — and one of you probably is — put it immediately after you enter the reception rather than 40 minutes into dinner. You are already being looked at. Get it while the adrenaline is still doing you a favor.

10. The toasts. The traditional roster is father of the bride, best man, maid of honor, in that order, and it is a hierarchy more than a lineup. Change it to a guest list. Pick 3 or 4 people, tell each of them 3 minutes, and tell them the deadline is real. If you have a parent who is thrilled and a parent who is still catching up, you are allowed to give the microphone to the thrilled one.

11. The last name. There is no default for you, which is genuinely more work and genuinely more freedom. Both keep, both change, one changes, hyphenate, pick a third name nobody has ever had. The only thing I will say firmly is decide it before the invitations go out, not after, because everything downstream (the signage, the thank-you cards, the monogram somebody's aunt is embroidering right now) points back at that one decision.

Pile 3: Ignore these (they were never for you)

12. The garter toss. It is a bit where the groom goes under the dress in front of your relatives. There is no two-bride version of this that improves anybody's evening. Skip it.

13. The bouquet toss, as written. The premise is that a room of single women should compete for the right to be next. If your friend group has been out here waiting on the law to catch up, that framing lands differently than the wedding blogs assume. Either drop it, or change the target — toss to everyone, or hand the bouquet directly to a specific person on purpose. That version is lovely. The scramble is not.

14. "Her family pays." This one is dead everywhere, not just for us, but it dies harder at a two-bride wedding because there are two sides and neither is the traditional payer. Build the budget from who is actually contributing what, in writing, early. It is not romantic and it will save you 3 arguments.

15. The idea that one of you is the groom. Somebody will ask. A vendor, a distant cousin, a form with two fields on it. You do not owe that question an answer, and you definitely do not owe it a costume. One of you can wear a suit because she wants to wear a suit. Neither of you is playing a part.

16. Being announced as anything you did not choose. Mrs. and Mrs., the Smiths, both full names, first names only — tell the DJ the exact words. Write them down. Vendors default to a script when you leave a blank, and the reception entrance is a bad place to discover which script they picked.

The one thing I would actually plan around

If you take nothing else from this: the traditions you keep should be the ones that put people you love INSIDE the day, rather than the ones that put you on display for them. That is the whole test. Something borrowed passes. The garter toss does not.

And this applies well before the wedding, too. It is the same instinct behind our whole approach to the bachelorette — the joint or separate question is really just this list again, one step earlier, with the same non-answers waiting for you online.

Summary

• Steal: something old/new/borrowed/blue (doubled to 8), the first look, vows you wrote, the exit, and anything your own family already does.
• Change: the aisle walk, the wedding party split, the no-seeing-each-other rule, the first dance timing, the toast roster, and the last name.
• Ignore: the garter toss, the bouquet scramble, "her family pays," the who-is-the-groom question, and any announcement you did not write yourself.
• Decide the last name early. Almost everything printed points back at it.
• The test for any tradition: does it put your people in the day, or does it put you on a stage?

If your family has a tradition you are wrestling with and it is not on this list, hit reply and tell me — I will take a swing at it. And if the bachelorette is the next thing on your list, the free Mini Game Pack is 10 pages and it is waiting for you.

— Jen

There is an equal sign tattooed on my body, and it has been there since June 26, 2015.

That is the day Obergefell came down and marriage equality became the law in every state in this country. A group of my friends and I went out that night to celebrate, and somewhere in the middle of it we decided that the celebration ought to be permanent. So every one of us got a matching equal sign. Not one of us has regretted it since!

I lead with that because I want you to know exactly where this site is coming from. I am old enough to remember when this wasn't allowed, when "wedding planning" for people like us meant a ceremony your own state would shrug at (or a plane ticket to somewhere that wouldn't). That isn't ancient history. That was ten years ago.

Two weddings, one divorce, and double the experience

Here is my actual résumé for this job. I have been married twice, both times to a woman. One of those marriages ended in divorce, and the other one is my whole life right now — my wife, and our daughter.

I'm not embarrassed by any of that, and I'm not going to leave the first one out so that the story sounds tidier. What it means is that I have planned two weddings from the inside. I have built the seating chart, made the vendor calls, and answered "so which one of you is the bride?" more times than I can count (cheerfully, every single time).

If you have had one wedding that worked and one that didn't, you learn things you would never learn from a single trip down the aisle. Honestly? The one that didn't work taught me more. So when I tell you that a piece of wedding advice doesn't survive contact with two brides, that is not a hunch.

Then I went looking for help, and there wasn't much

The first thing I did was type "lesbian bachelorette party games" into Google, and then I sat there for a minute feeling a little stunned. It wasn't that there was nothing — there are pages and pages and pages of results. However, almost all of it turned out to be the standard bachelorette content with the word "lesbian" stapled onto the front of the headline.

If you scroll down far enough, there it is anyway: guess what the groom said, how well do you know your man, a cocktail recipe shaped like something I don't need to describe for you.

So you do what everybody does. You buy the $12 game pack anyway, and then you spend 45 minutes at your kitchen table with a Sharpie, crossing out "he" and writing in "she" on all 30 cards, and hoping that nobody draws the one about his fantasy football league.

I got tired of the Sharpie!

Two brides is a structural difference, not a cosmetic one

This is the part that the big wedding sites keep missing. When there are two brides, you are not dealing with a find-and-replace problem. You are dealing with a structural one.

You have two people who both get to be the bride. You potentially have two squads who have never met each other, two sets of parents with two sets of opinions (and 4 parents means 4 opinions about the guest list), and two people who each want a night that feels like theirs. Then you have one shared budget, one calendar, and a group chat that is somehow already sitting at 400 unread.

Nobody writes about any of that! It isn't hostility, mostly — they simply have never had to think about it. However, the questions are real and they are specific, and "have a co-ed bach party!" isn't an answer to a single one of them.

What this site is

Both Brides is the specific, useful, unapologetically gay version. That is the whole pitch, and here is what it looks like:

• Guides — the long answers to the questions you are actually asking, like joint party or separate, how to run a weekend for two squads, and which games work when there is no groom to guess about.
• Printables — designed for two brides from the first draft, not adapted and not find-and-replaced. They are coming soon.
• This blog — the things that don't fit inside a guide: opinions, the stuff I am figuring out in real time, and the occasional hill I am prepared to die on.

Underneath all of it is something simpler. I got to have this — twice, technically! There are people who fought so that I could, and there are people planning right now who deserve better than a Sharpie and a shrug.

What I would love from you

Tell me what you couldn't find.

That isn't a throwaway line. All 4 of the guides on this site started life as a search that came up empty, so if you are planning right now and you have hit a wall, that wall is my next post. You can message me on Instagram or say hi here.

If you want the free Mini Game Pack when it drops (two-bride game cards, no Sharpie required), the signup is right below. That is genuinely the only thing I will email you about.

Summary

• I have planned two weddings, both of them to a woman, and I remember when we weren't allowed to have them at all.
• The bachelorette internet assumes a groom, and crossing him out with a Sharpie isn't design.
• Two brides changes the structure of the celebration, not just the pronouns.
• Both Brides is guides, printables, and this blog — all of it built for two brides on purpose.

Thanks for being here at the very beginning!

If you go shopping for bachelorette games as though you are planning a party for two brides, you will notice something within about 10 minutes. Filter for "lesbian," "sapphic," or "LGBTQ" — whatever the shop will let you type into the box — and then actually read the cards.

They break. They break every time, and they break in the same six places. Here they are, worst to least-worst, along with what you can do about each one.

1. The groom is load-bearing

I don't mean that the groom gets mentioned somewhere. I mean that he is load-bearing: if you pull him out of the game, the whole thing collapses, because he was the entire mechanic. "Guess how he proposed." "How many exes did he have?" "Rank his worst habits."

You can't Sharpie your way out of this one, and unfortunately it is the one that matters most (it is usually the centerpiece game of the whole night). The fix is a format built for two protagonists instead of one. If both brides answer the same questions separately beforehand, the room gets to compare the answers side by side — same energy, twice the payoff, and nobody is left out. (I broke that format down properly in the games guide, where it is called She Said / She Said.)

2. "Bride" is singular in nineteen different places

The pack technically works. However, every single card says the bride, and there are two of them standing right there in the room. So all night long somebody is reading a card out loud and doing that little verbal stumble: "the bride… sorry, Sam… I mean, both of you…" — and that happens on 30 or 40 separate cards!

It is a small thing. It is also constant, and small-and-constant is exactly how you make somebody feel like a guest at her own party. If you are the one hosting, read every card out loud once the day before and pencil in the names. That is 20 minutes of work (with a pencil, at your kitchen table), and the difference it makes is BIG.

3. Find-and-replace isn't design

You can always tell when it has happened. The listicle promises "27 Lesbian Bachelorette Ideas," and then idea number 14 is still "hire a male stripper (she'll love it!)." Somebody ran find-and-replace on a 2019 post and shipped it.

The tell is usually the pictures. If the cover photo shows two women and the actual cards are covered in clip-art top hats and mustaches (yes, really), believe the cards.

4. They assume one squad

Almost every game on the market is written for one friend group who all already know each other. At a two-bride party you very often have two groups meeting for the first time, and the games are the ONLY structured thing standing between you and 90 minutes of polite small talk in kitchen corners.

Honestly, this is the biggest missed opportunity in the whole category. A game that doubles as an icebreaker does two jobs at once, and there are easy versions of it: bingo cards with squares like "find someone who was at their first date," or team trivia where each squad has to answer questions about the other bride. Nobody sells that. Everybody needs it.

5. The humor punches at the couple instead of with them

A great deal of bachelorette content rests on a single joke, and the joke is that marriage is a prison and this is your last night of freedom.

If that is your friend group's sense of humor, go for it — genuinely! However, it lands differently for a couple who spent a while not being allowed to do this at all. The best games make the brides feel adored, not hazed. Spice is wonderful, spice should always be optional, and if you are hosting you should pull any card that will land wrong in your room before the game starts rather than during it.

6. Nothing leaves anything behind

You spend somewhere between $12 and $40, you play for an hour, and then the cards go in the recycling.

The games that people actually remember are the ones that produce an artifact: a superlatives ballot that everybody signed, mad-lib vows that turned out accidentally beautiful, a video of both brides answering the same 10 questions in two different rooms (that one costs you $0 and a phone). It costs almost nothing to do, and almost nobody does it. DO it.

Summary

• Five of these six problems are fixable in about ten minutes, with a pen and a read-through the night before.
• Number one isn't fixable. If the groom is the mechanic, you need a different game, not a different pronoun.
• Read the cards before you buy, and believe the cards over the cover photo.
• If two friend groups are meeting for the first time, choose games that double as icebreakers.
• Leave something behind — a ballot, a video, a keepsake somebody will screenshot for years.

If you would rather have the actual games than the complaints, here are nine that work for two brides.

None of these are malicious, and that is genuinely the point. Almost every one of them comes from a vendor being friendly, working off a script that was written for a different couple, on autopilot.

However, you hear them constantly, and they add up. Here are five of them, along with the version that costs nobody anything.

1. "So which one of you is the bride?"

This is the all-timer. It is usually cheerful, and it occasionally arrives with a little wink (which does not help at all!).

Say instead: "Tell me about the couple!" It is shorter, it works for every wedding on earth, and it gets the vendor better information than the original question ever would.

2. Forms with a "Bride" field and a "Groom" field

This one isn't even a phrase — it is a database schema, and it is everywhere. Venue inquiries, catering contracts, the little card at the tasting. You will meet it over and over again. You end up typing your fiancée's name into a box labeled GROOM, which is a strange way to begin what is supposed to be a happy planning meeting.

Say instead: "Partner 1" and "Partner 2." Two words. If you are a vendor reading this, that is a 15-minute change to your intake form and it will make you money!

3. "Alternative wedding"

Alternative to what, exactly??

It shows up in vendor marketing constantly, and it is almost always meant warmly ("we specialize in alternative and non-traditional celebrations!"). However, the word does something specific: it makes the default weddings the real ones, and it makes yours the variant. You are not an alternative. You are a Tuesday.

Say instead: just "wedding." If a vendor wants to signal that they are actually good at this, "we work with a lot of same-sex couples" says it far better, and you can check whether it is true.

4. "I now pronounce you man and wife"

This one is sitting right there in officiant scripts that haven't been opened since 1998 (and there are a lot of them still in circulation). It is worth catching early, because the ceremony is the one part of the whole day that you cannot re-do.

Say instead: "I now pronounce you married." Or "wife and wife." Or your names. If you do nothing else on this list, ask your officiant to send you the full script six weeks out and read every line of it, not just the vows. It is the highest-value hour of proofreading in the entire process, and almost nobody does it.

5. "Who's walking down the aisle?"

It gets asked as though there is one correct answer and you have simply forgotten what it is.

There isn't one. Both of you can walk, or neither of you has to. You can walk in together from the back, which is my favorite version and looks incredible in photographs. You can also each come down a different aisle and meet in the middle, which takes 1 conversation with your venue and is worth every minute of it.

Say instead: "How do you two want to enter?" Same question, and there is no trap door in it.

What to do with all of this

Honestly? Most of the time, nothing. You are planning a wedding, not running a workshop, and the emotional labor of correcting every vendor is not a job that you signed up for.

However, 2 of them are worth the energy. Fix the ceremony script, because that one is permanent and it ends up in the video. And use the small stuff as a filter — if a vendor says "partner" unprompted on the first phone call, that tells you something true about how the rest of it is going to go. It isn't a red-flag test. It is a shortcut to the good ones.

Summary

• "Which one of you is the bride?" → "Tell me about the couple!"
• Bride and Groom form fields → Partner 1 and Partner 2
• "Alternative wedding" → "wedding"
• "Man and wife" → "married," or "wife and wife"
• "Who's walking down the aisle?" → "How do you two want to enter?"

Which one do you hear the most? I am collecting them, so tell me on Instagram and I will do a part two.