Hen Do Plans for Groups of Different Ages: Top 10 Ideas

Your mum wants to know what time it ends. Your mother-in-law hasn't opened the group chat since Tuesday. Two friends are voting for a club, one is voting for a spa, and the cousin flying in keeps asking for the address. Hen do plans for groups of different ages rarely fall apart over the idea. They fall apart because nobody agreed on the hour first.

Call it a hen do or a bachelorette — the logistics don't change. Decide two things before anything else: a slot that works for a 28-year-old and a 68-year-old on the same afternoon, and one place where everyone confirms. The rest is detail you can move around.

Start with the hour, not the venue

A Saturday lunch at 2pm or a Sunday brunch at noon gets your mum and your mother-in-law home at a sensible hour and still leaves your friends a long afternoon. If people are travelling in, set one meeting point with the full street address and a map link. You answer the where-is-it question once instead of ten times.

• Saturday lunch at 2pm or Sunday brunch at noon — nobody has to decide whether to leave early.
• One meeting point with the street address and a map link for anyone arriving by train or plane.
• Book the table before you announce anything. A group of twelve doesn't get seated at 2pm by chance.
• Put the dress code somewhere everyone reads it. 'All white' or 'sequins' isn't something you mention once in a voice note.

Top 10 hen do ideas for groups of different ages

Split the day into two rounds and let people choose. Daytime: a long lunch at a seafood place with the table booked for 2pm; a two-hour pottery workshop; an urban spa with a water circuit; a tapas route through three bars that ends on a terrace; or a picnic in the park with a proper tablecloth and a basket.

Evening: dinner in a private room; karaoke; a cooking class where everyone leaves with the recipe; a cocktail on a terrace where the music is low enough to talk; or a country house with a barbecue and a long table outside. Pair one calm option with one louder one. That's the whole trick — your mum isn't worn out and your friends aren't bored. If the seafood place is fully booked, a cooking class covers the meal and the activity in one booking.

Two rounds, one link, and nobody chasing replies.

One link, one set of answers

Set the confirmation questions you actually need — who's staying for dinner, who's only coming to brunch, who's in for the workshop — and the answers collect in a list inside the invitation. Guests don't install anything: they open the link in a browser and reply from their phone. A digital invitation from Send The Joy costs €29.99 as a one-off payment, holds up to six of your own photos plus music and linked scenes, and you can try it free before you pay. If the time or the place changes later, you edit it and the link stays the same. Pick two plans, put the hour and the address in one invitation, and let the confirmations arrive without a second group chat.