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Venmo the Bride: Bachelorette Parties Ask Strangers to Foot the Bill
QR codes send passersby to accounts where they can donate to cover party expenses, distressing etiquette experts; ‘Feel free to throw something our way.’
www.wsj.com
Venmo the Bride: Bachelorette Parties Ask Strangers to Foot the Bill
QR codes send passersby to accounts where they can donate to cover party expenses, distressing etiquette experts; ‘Feel free to throw something our way’
Savanna Joi Norris had a big to-do list as one of the organizers of her friend’s bachelorette extravaganza in August.
The 23-year-old in the Raleigh, N.C., area helped choose Charleston, S.C., as a destination and worked with other attendees to plan festivities, including an outing to a piano bar and a “sip n’ shop” tour of boutiques.
Then, Ms. Norris proposed one more idea, the icing on the five-tiered cake: Would the group want to make some cash along the way to help with the costs of their friend’s “final fling before the ring?”
They bought streamers and a rainbow bouquet of paint markers and decorated their cars: “Buy the Bride a Drink!” and “Venmo the wifey,” with the party’s Venmo address provided.
Go to Nashville, New Orleans, Austin or other hot bachelorette trip destinations and you’ll see these unveiled requests: Before brides wear white, they’re looking for green, via payments sent through Venmo.
Some brides-to-be, including Ms. Norris’s friend, are bringing in hundreds of dollars in a night thanks to random passersby.
As the entourage traveled to Charleston, like a conga line on wheels, other drivers honked horns and gave the thumbs-up. At one point, rain ruined their handmade car decorations, so they stopped on the side of the road and repainted the signs. The hassle paid off: They again heard the joyful “cha-ching” sound of Venmo notifications.
By the trip’s end, Ms. Norris and her friends had collected over $450, made up of hundreds of $1 and $5 Venmos.
“We thought, ‘Why not?’ Some people may think it’s like begging for money, but we didn’t think about it like that,” said Ms. Norris, who recently left her public-relations job at a parks-and-recreation department. “We had a lot of good interactions. When we would stop and get food people would say ‘We love the van!’ or ‘Oh, my God! A bridal party!’ ”
Some observers give the idea a firm “I don’t.”
Etiquette expert Lizzie Post, co-president at the Emily Post Institute, couldn’t hide her discomfort. In recent years, she has noticed more pressure to throw big celebrations. She said soliciting money goes too far.
“I think it is starting to look a little like ‘I’m shouting out to the world, give me give me give me,’ ” she said. “When I then place an etiquette lens over it, it doesn’t pass muster. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing [we] at Emily Post are wanting to encourage right now.”
The asks can backfire. A bridesmaid on Reddit shared how the “buy a bride a drink” sign on the back of her group’s car prompted another driver to Venmo the bride a penny and tell her to get out of the left lane.
The strategy sprang up on social media. Now, bachelorette revelers are putting stickers, with QR codes or the bride’s payment info, on T-shirts, telephone poles and bar bathroom mirrors. Bachelor parties are taking part, too.
Summer Baldwin, a 26-year-old production coordinator at a custom-sign business in Omaha, rolls her eyes at the carloads of bachelorettes she frequently sees in vehicles decorated with signs saying “buy the bride a drink!” and listing a Venmo account.
“I’m like ‘ugh,’ ” she said. “I’m always so tempted to request money from that handle. They’re just not reading the room.”
Others think bachelorettes are tapping into the zeitgeist.
“One of our big 2022 trends is app-driven, creatively driven bachelorette parties,” said Esther Lee, deputy editor at The Knot, a wedding website. “People are planning with the usage of apps like Venmo and Splitwise, and I think it’s savvy.”
After more than two years of postponed and pared-down nuptials, there will be around 2.6 million weddings in 2022, up from 2.2 million in the pre-pandemic years, she estimated.
The median cost to attend a bachelorette or bachelor trip rose to $1,500 this year from $1,400 last year, according to Savings.com, a coupon and promo-codes website. The majority goes to travel and lodging, but more and more partygoers shell out for gifts and clothing. Instagram and social media highlight blowout bashes with gold-foil balloon arches and multiple outfit changes.
“This is something that you might only get to do once, and I think people don’t want to have any regrets about maybe not going to the max,” said Corie Wagner, senior analyst for Savings.com.
Even organizers of lower-key celebrations seek donations.
Madison Etiz, a 29-year-old administrative assistant in Seattle, started planning her best friend’s bachelorette earlier this summer. She knew a simpler weekend would fit the bride’s style, so she and her friends opted to rent a local Airbnb.
Having seen TikTok clips of other bachelorette parties using the Venmo strategy, she and the other bridesmaids decided to try it out. Ms. Etiz changed her personal Venmo handle to a version of “Drinks4theBride” and updated her profile photo to a picture of the bride-to-be decked out in a veil and holding a Smirnoff Ice bottle.
“We’re not cheap,” Ms. Etiz said, “but especially for the girls in school or the girls with jobs in academia, they’re like ‘Listen, any money I can save on this trip, I’ll take it.’ ”
She said the pitch was low pressure, essentially, “Hey man, if you’re feeling generous…then feel free to throw something our way.”
By the night’s end, Ms. Etiz’s group amassed around $400, mostly from friends or friends-of-friends who saw the post on social media. She thinks many givers felt good contributing to a celebration after a rough couple of years.
The attendees agreed to give the purse to the bride-to-be so she could cover all her trip expenses. Instead, she insisted on sharing the bounty with her bachelorette-party attendees so they would have their expenses taken care of, too.
“She wanted to put it toward everybody else,” Ms. Etiz said, “which is totally the kind of person she is.”
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Here is one such bachelorette group. Yeegads!
