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A Harry Potter Hen Do Part 2

22 Monday May 2017

Posted by lotales in Places I go, Things I do

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best friends, Harry Potter Hen Do, hen do, Liverpool, The Cavern Club, The Shankley Hotel

So now you know everything we had planned / prepped before hand…. Let’s talk about what happened on the actual Hen Do!

On the Thursday night on the eve of the hen do, I headed over to Becs after work & joined our bride-to-be for a chilled night in and a bit of advice on packing.

No one tells you that being a hen is an odd experience… with my hen do approaching I can completely appreciate the bizarre feeling of excitement and feeling left out! Haha… I reassured our girl and we went over what to pack, making sure she had lots in her case that made her feel amazing!

The morning of the hen and we woke excited and nervous… and made our way over to Euston to meet up with the other girls and grab some brunch. We met with another few girls and began some hen fun!!

Once on the train the fun really began, we popped some corks and played some games and started with the hen do selfies!! Be sure to check out #SnitchAndSnatch17 if you wanna see some of our shenanigans…

We arrived in Liverpool and headed to a cheap & cheerful pub for some lunch and a few more glasses of bubbles! As soon as the bridesmaids were done off we headed and set about decorating he hotel room in preparation of the arrival of our gal ❤

Fast forward 45 mins or so and after a whistle-stop tour to Ruby Blues (haha) the girls arrived and still I am overjoyed when I see the photo of Bec seeing the room for the first time!!! Yay….

First things first the sorting had to take place… as you can tell by the pics the gals found the whole thing rather amusing and after being sorted into teams the fun could really begin….

Armed with goodie bags and plenty of prosecco it wasn’t long before the bikinis were on and girls were in the tub…

The evening was spent in true hen party style, lots of alcohol, dancing, pizza, laughing, selfies, fun and shenanigans.

We stumbled into our beds happy and smiling and ready for a new day of fun!

Saturday morning and it was time to get about and about in Liverpool. Divided into our houses, a list of tasks and missions to attempt in hand, and off we headed for an hour and half of fun and hilarity.

I think it best the evidence stays a hen party secret so instead I shall move onto our Saturday afternoon activity potions making, ahem… cocktail making!

We headed to the Alchemist, and it was amazing…. We spent hours and hours making different cocktails and enjoying them too! Our lovely barman Eric was amazing and very patient with this huge gaggle of gals! The cocktails were all delicious and so was the food! If you’re ever looking to do a cocktail making session I cannot recommend The Alchemist enough…!

After that we headed home and readied ourselves for the evening… The hotel was perfect for getting ready for a girls night out! First destination on our list was Wildwood for some dinner! Delicious!!

After that we headed back to Ruby Blues, an amusing old mans bar and music spot, I think we were the youngest people in there by about 20 years but it was so funny and we had ourselves a little boogie!

After we had our fill of Ruby Blues we headed to the only destination that was on our books, The Cavern Club!! We had so much fun, it was literally the best night out I’ve had in ages!!!! We befriended the house band and got up on stage a few times to badly belt out some classics like Valerie and Proud Mary…. A pretty surreal and special moment I must admit! After a few hours dancing the night away and singing so loud we nearly lost our voices it was 2am and we were being asked to leave. A burger and a slow walk home and another successful hen do day was had!!

Sunday and it was time to pack up and head home…

The rest of the girls left after checking out but the bridesmaids hung around a little longer to enjoy a bit of indulgence. We headed down to the docks and had ourselves a lovely little lunch then went on to enjoy an afternoon relaxing in the Efora Spa.

A few hours of pampering later and a quick dash to the train and it was home time… We finished off the rest of the Hen Do book and reminisced over the best moments of the last few days!!

So there you have it…. The perfect weekend for my beautiful bestie! We literally had the best time ever…

A Harry Potter Hen Do Part 1

22 Monday May 2017

Posted by lotales in Show & Tell, Things I do

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Tags

Harry Potter, Harry Potter Hen Do, hen do, Liverpool

Way back when Miss Rebecca Higgins first asked me to be one of her bridesmaids I was beyond excited!! Not only for the wedding, but also because I’d get to help organise her hen do!!

Once all the bridesmaids had joined the ‘hen do planning must have group whatsapp chat’ the discussions began and it was decided early on that Becca’s love for Harry Potter should 100% be a part of the weekend, but also that it should just be blooming amazing, lots of fun and a little bit naughty!!! haha

This excited me no end, as I too am a massive potter head! So we all went off and started thinking about ideas and where we could go and of course, good old pinterest played a huge part in the inspiration for the weekend!

I’ve made the board public now so feel free to take a look if you fancy doing something similar. We DIY’d a lot of the things ourselves to save money but there are so many resources and things out there, which you can buy if crafting isn’t really your thing!

I mixed and matched things up and customized a lot of free online downloads too to make them fit Becca’s Hen!

The first thing we had to sort was the location, the brief just said ‘a big city’, and because Becca lives in London we were thinking of Leeds, Liverpool or Manchester….

During one late night online research session along the lines of ‘Hen Do Venues for 20 people’ I stumbled across The Shankley Hotel in Liverpool and its amazing rooms!!

The hotel was obviously designed for hen and stag dos and boasted loads of big dormitory style rooms. We initially fell in love with ‘The Vault’ a huge room with bunk beds for grown ups and your own private underground bar with Jacuzzi…. Sounds good right!!!?!?!?

As fate would have it, it wasn’t available on the dates we wanted and it was also quite a bit over our budget. When I say fate, I mean it, as this meant I kept looking and discovered ‘The Laurent Perrier Suite’.

This room could have been made for us, and Becca, and the theme. A huge, indulgent room that slept 24; 12 nooks, each containing a comfy double bed and wet room behind plush gold velvet curtains all around the star feature of the suite; a huge roman bath which ran the length of the room! The sleeping nooks were split over two floors from a split staircase on the back wall and overlooked the lower level! As you came in through the huge medieval looking, vault-like doors there was also a seating area and a small kitchenette. It was perfect!! We contacted them straight away and booked it…. It was obviously meant to be!!

Not only was the room impressive to look at, it had an amazing luxurious feel to it (think hues of gold everywhere) but it also meant we’d all be together, all weekend!! Any girl will tell you that one of the best parts of a night out is the getting ready, the gossiping, the trying outfits on for approval, the doing hair for each other and obviously the vast amounts of prosecco that are needed to fuel the getting ready process.

By being all-together, it would ensure no one would feel left out or that they were missing out on some of the fun, a must have for our beautiful bride to be! The other obvious bonus to the room was that it looked like it cold have been plucked from the pages of Harry Potter; a mash up of a prefects bathroom and what I imagine the Hufflepuff dormitory would have looked liked!

So with a city and the accommodation sorted it was on to the décor, the games and the general tomfoolery!

Being a creative little sod I was in my element and now that it’s been and gone, I kinda miss my HP themed crafting evenings!! (all though the wedding has taken over all crafting evenings)

In this post I’m gonna concentrate on a few of the things we made to make the room even more special!

First up goody bags!

No good hen do is complete without a few goodies for the brides best gals. One of the bridesmaids suggested Velvet for the ultimate wizard-esq bag so a trip to fabricland and a day at my sewing machine later 17 little velvet pouches (in house colours don’t ya know) where made and waiting to be filled.

Any Harry Potter themed party needs a wand so I spent an amusing evening crafting these from wooden chopsticks, glue guns and some various spray paints/pens! The fact they were somewhat phallic also added to the Hen Party vibe too!

Being it was a hen do alcohol was also required. We brought and found a collection of various miniatures and these were then transformed into potion bottles that Severus Snape himself would have been proud of! I soaked off the labels and replaced them with ones I made or downloaded. Check out these links for some of the ones I used.

I was so happy with how they turned out and with potions including Love Potion, Truth Serum and Liquid Luck, I felt all pretty apt considering their alcoholic contents!!

We also had some sweet treats, some chocolates (incase of dementor attacks), a golden snitch (made from a good old Ferrero roche) and also some miniature boxes of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans!! I made small versions of these by scanning in a full size box (which I brought at the Harry Potter Studios which we visited in November for Maxwell’s Birthday) and scaling it down on photoshop. These were then constructed and filled with good ol’ Jellybeans!! Cute huh!!

Also in the goody bag were Dark Mark tattoos (which I also brought from the HP Studio), A personalized champagne flute, a little deathly hallows bracelet which I made, ‘I solemnly Swear I’m up to no good’ badge (which you can get here), a lumos sparkler (get it?!), A HP themed hangover kit and some Butter Beer lip balms which I pimped!!

All of which were super easy to do, it just needed a bit of imagination and quite a bit of time! At some point, after all the weddings have been and gone, I’ll share some of the templates I made/used/created!!

Goody Bags sorted; lets talk about Décor…

The Room didn’t need much, but we did a few bits here and there…

Lindsay found and printed off a load of harry potter themed photobooth props which towards the end of the first night were brought out and amused and abused! Haha. We also did directional signposts (Diagon Alley, Privet Drive, Gringotts etc_ and I used some of my trusty Kraft DIY bunting to spell out phrases such as Muggle to Mrs, Team Gryffindor, I solemnly Swear I’m up to no good and our hilarious hashtag #SnitchAndSnatch17

Kelly and I also made loads of quite amusing Education Decree Posters using this really good downloadable template and some undesirable no.1 posters of Becca!! Haha

We also did a few signs and bits and bobs here and there, which if you’re HP fan, you’d really get and would make you chuckle!! These included:

*Beware, the stairs move (on the stairs obviously)

*A Fat Lady (for the front door)

*A moaning Myrtle (stuck on the inside of Becca’s toilet lid – haha)

*A Potions Making Station Sign (to hang above the bar)

*Plastic spiders (as in ‘follow the spiders’)

*’The third floor corridor is strictly off bounds to anyone not wanting to die a most painful death’ sign

*’Free Invisibility Cloaks’ sign

*Photos of Bec throughout her life (super cute idea for any hen!)

Urm….. and some balloons?! Haha…

All this came together to just make the room look even more magical!

Caroline also made the most AMAZING sorting hat!!! (I’ll explain a little bit more about that below) When Becca walked in to the room and saw it all for the first time her face was priceless and was worth every second and every penny!!!! So So Good!!!

The last thing we need to discuss is the games…. A hen do is not a hen do with out a bit of gaming so here goes… Here’s what we did and how we did it:

THE SORTING

Being that there was such a big group of us we thought it wise to split the group up into smaller teams, and being that this was a HP themed Hen Do the answer was easy. The girls would all be split into the 4 Hogwarts houses and we 4 bridesmaids would be house prefects!! The idea was that over the course of the weekend any good behavior (excessive drinking, impressive dance moves, winning games) would earn house points, any bad behavior (going to bed early, being sensible/boring) would loose you house points!! The team with the most points at the end of the weekend could win the house cup (aka mini bottle of champagne!!! 😉

To do the sorting we used the fab hat, which Caroline had made and asked Bernie, Becca’s lovely dad, to record a pre written script which (as if by magic) made hilarious comments and musings about the person whom it sat on and decided what house they would be in!! This was so funny and even the girls who were utterly HP clueless still found the whole thing very silly and funny!!

MR & MRS

A Hen Do Favourite!! In a book I created for Bec, We asked Edward her Fiancé 20 questions that Bec had to guess his anwsers!! I used tiny envelopes brought from Paperchase and my favourite Typewriter!!

I MUST NOT TELL LIES

A fun game of our own invention… We asked the girls to share with us a naughty/funny/saucy/embarrassing story about Becca and we may have also added in a few fake stories…. The game is simple, Becca would read them one at a time, out loud, and the girls (split into house teams) would then have to guess if she was telling the truth or not! Correct answers = house points… you get the jist!!

QUIDDITCH PROSECCO PONG

A pimped up HP hen do version of Beer Pong (with quidditch hoops made by my lovely fiancé)

LIVERPOOL SCAVENGER HUNT

This was a great way to get out and about and see all the best bits of Liverpool. Lindsay used the add called GooseChase and added in loads of funny HP/Hen Do tasks as well as some standard Liverpool-esq ones.

This was such good fun and the teams could do as much or as little as they wanted…. Fab fun!!!!

PIN THE LIGHTENING BOLT SCAR ON EDDY POTTER

An amusing take on the kids party game of pin the tail on the donkey!! Unfortunately the Eddy Potter face I’d made got a little chopped up! Whoops! Haha but we improvised and it was still very funny!!

THE NAKED HARRY POTTER CAST GAME

This was probably one of the funniest games I invented!!! Haha….. I spent an amusing evening googling naked/topless pictures of the cast of Harry potter then chopped off their heads! The game was to match the actor with the character, extra points given if you also knew the character name!!! Very funny/very childish/very hen party appropriate and thanks to Daniel Radcliffe’s stint on the stage quite exciting too!!! Haha

POTIONS MAKING

Quite simply – cocktail making/ pimp your prosecco station… We renamed some classic Prosecco Cocktails with a HP-esq title and provided all the herbs/fruits and mixers to create! Simple and obviously well used!

HEN DO BOOK

I also created a hen do book for Bec, a little tradition of mine, but this one was my most impressive/fullest yet!! I asked to girls to sent me notes/photos to include…. I also left space to put all the pics in which we’d inevitably take over the weekend and also other funny things like ‘design a dress for Becca’ and a space for well wishes and a card/letter from her mum and hubby to be!!

So there you have it!

A few hints and tips of you’re thinking of planning a HP Hen Do!! I hope you find this useful!! I post the actual pics separately as I think this post has enough content!!

 

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Ami Lowman is a maker, blogger & owner of the creative brand Mia Mai who lives with her fiancé in the seaside town of Southsea, Uk.

Ami is currently planning the wedding of their dreams, loves all things vintage, takes too many photos and has a thing for the old, weird and forgotten.

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