Napa Bachelorette: All the Planning Details

I can’t believe Napa came and went already. Time sure does fly. In fact this last year and a half engagement has gone in the blink of an eye. I can’t believe our wedding is less than 2 weeks away. This my friends is why my blog posts have been far and in between. My time lately has been consumed with the wedding. I am extremely excited to get back to posting more bliss post wedding and sharing my/our life with you. 

If you don’t know my bachelorette party/trip was in Napa, CA. This trip was all the BLISS so much so I don’t think bliss even begins to describe it. I am not going to divulge into the whole nine yard of the exact trip here (another post) but I am going to give you the guide I made for the bachelorette party and all the details on the back end of planning this shin dig. 

You may be like, Jessica, why did you plan your own bachelorette party. You are not supposed to do that. Well let me tell you ladies and gents. I am a type “A” and planning freak. I love to plan events, dinners, trips, etc. and so I  told my babe brigade I would happily plan it, and this is what I did.  

Hotel vs. Airbnb

When I first envisioned this trip (before I was even engaged) I thought about hotel rooms and how expensive and unrealistic it would be. The whole point of the trip was to spend time with my girls and not be confined to separate rooms. I am all about a good girls slumber party and this is exactly what I envisioned as part of this trip. All of this said, my babe brigade and I went the Airbnb route. We found the cutest home in Napa, CA, that I have linked here. 

Picking where you want to stay depends on a few things: 

• Do you want alone time or do you want to be part of a group the whole time? 
• What activities do you have planned? 
• How many people are coming on the trip? 
• What is the budget you would like to stick in? 
• What time of year are you going? 

These questions are all components to take in when planning where to stay for a trip. After answering all of these, analyze if a house/condo  would be a better spot or a hotel. 

Eats

Food is definitely a love of mine, however I am not big on going out to eat. I hate not knowing exactly what all is in my food. This again is one of the reasons I chose a house for our lodging, so we could cook most meals instead of eating out all of the trip. Cooking most meals helped: 

• Save the babe brigade and myself quite a bit of money (our food bill was under $300 for 4 days) crazy!
• Eat healthy. We knew exactly what went in our food. 
• Eat when we were hungry. If someone was hungry and not the other they just made something. 
• Bond over cooking meals together. 
• Consume the most delicious meals. 

With cooking our meals/ eating most meals at our Airbnb, I made a menu ahead of time and grocery list for us. This was super convenient for us, so that when we arrived to Napa, CA we hit up the local Trader Joes and the babe brigade all went grocery shopping. Imagine 7 girls shopping for food and wine. Let’s just say we had more than one cart full of food. Hehe. 

The two times we did eat out were for lunch during vineyard day. Lunch consisted of the cutest put together picnic basket from Oakville Grocery. It was a cooler picnic basket filled with everything you could possibly imagine for a cheese and charcuterie board, and of course a side of desserts. I would highly recommend getting catering from Oakville Grocery if you do a Napa trip. 

The other place we at out at was Basalt located in Napa. We choose this restaurant as it was convenient to walk to after a long day of vineyard-ing. The food was delicious and I would definitely recommend. 

Transportation

How do you transport 7 girls and all of their luggage around. Well, you rent a “murder van.” Just kidding, well not really. We rented a 15 passenger van and we called it the “murder van” as it looked like one of those creepy vans you see on a horror movie. This ended up saving us boat loads of money and was under $50 a person. We used this van to get from SFO where we all flew in to our house and then to run errands for groceries and more wine (let’s face it there is never enough wine). 

Vineyard day we used a gentleman that has his own Mercedes sprinter van. His company is called, All Day Wine Tours. This was again by far the most reasonably priced option and our driver was the best. He was very knowledgable on exactly where we had to be dropped off and where we had to go. 

Vineyards

I will divulge more into the vineyards we choose and our experience in an upcoming post but a few pieces of advice for all those going go visit Napa, CA, especially with a large group. 

• Book your vineyard tours and tastings at least 3 months in advance. 
• Map out where you are going and how long it will take you to get from one to the next. 
• Don’t book too many stops. I recommend no more than 4. You really want to be able to take it all in and enjoy it. 

Plan

Plan out your trip. Make sure you have everything ready. This will cause less anxiety and more bliss when the trip actually rolls around. I have attached a PDF of all the details of my bachelorette trip. Feel free to use and curtail to your needs. The only thing I ask is a tag on your trip so I can soak up all of your bliss. 

Cheers! XOX0