As of this weekend, I was a bachelorette party semi-virgin, meaning that the only other bachelorette party I attended was when I was 21 and served as my sister’s Maid of Honor (if you use the term loosely).

I threw her what I vaguely remember to be a bachelorette party that ended with the two of us turning up our noses at the wedding-dress-friendly crudité her lovely friend had stocked the hotel room with and wandering the streets of Minneapolis in search of a hamburger at 2:30 in the morning and our mother shaking her head at us the next day at brunch.

Fast forward seven years and I am once again suiting up for bridesmaid duty, this time for one of my dearest childhood friends (if you don’t count the one time she made me eat a dog biscuit to earn an ice cream drumstick at her house after school).

Saturday night started out perfectly: wine and girl talk in a hotel suite downtown, the bride opening gifts of tasteful lingerie and heart-felt cards with nary a piece of penis décor in sight.

And then we went out.

Hard.

Harder than I remember ever going out in college.

There was dancing. Shouting. Laughter. Shots. Oh, so many shots. Or as they should be called, tiny glasses of regret.

The damage?
• One sprained ankle, incurred during an attempted Dirty Dancing lift on the dance floor
• One more-than-slightly annoyed boyfriend, waiting in the car at 4:30am outside of the hotel
• One slightly-annoyed husband, dropping off two backseat drivers at the beginning of the night
• One missing birth control prescription (oops!)
• Fifteen blurry iPhone photos (what were we trying to capture?)
• Countless gibberish text messages, because communication is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship
• Two missing shoes, found the next morning in the hotel room, far from their owner
• Shattered dignity, which can only be repaired after much self-reflection

All in all, I’d call it a success.

What’s your favorite bachelorette party story? No judgments.

by Nora McInerny