Lauren Sánchez's tacky hen do beats warm prosecco and naked butlers in a Bournemouth Airbnb

Telegraph

25-05-2025

We should begin by noting that, obviously, it looked awful and vulgar and terribly tiring. Four days in Paris, featuring fried chicken and caviar rigatoni (how French) for dinner at one fashionable restaurant; rooftop champagne overlooking the Eiffel tower; lunch at another fashionable restaurant; and a cruise along the Seine. They all wore outfits that, at best, looked uncomfortable and, at worst, would give one a bad dose of cystitis. Several travelled with their own hair stylists.
This was Lauren Sánchez 's hen party, or bachelorette, as they say in the States. Sánchez, the fiancée of Jeff Bezos, the world's second-richest man, recently hit the French capital along with 11 of her closest gal pals, including Katy Perry, Eva Longoria, an unsmiling Kim Kardashian and Kim's mother, Kris Jenner. Those who know the cost of such things – hotel suites at the Cheval Blanc, boats on the Seine, gallons of champagne and litres of cranberry juice – estimate that the entire shebang would have cost around £500,000. Horrid. Ostentatious. What show-offs.
And yet I might not have turned down the invitation, in the unlikely event it had come my way, because the long weekend had one thing going for it: Lauren presumably picked up the tab. Sure, someone else might have chipped in for a round. Apparently they drank espresso martinis at one stage, and danced to Earth, Wind & Fire (a detail I found endearingly levelling, because I remember doing the same during a hen party, at a nightclub in Cheltenham). But I bet you a diamanté-encrusted cowboy hat that Sánchez fronted most of it, and I don't mean to sound grasping and mercenary and terribly bitter, but oh, how refreshing that would be after a decade or so of tricky hen party financing.
Hundreds of pounds spent on mildly depressing Airbnbs in the Cotswolds and Bournemouth (weird that Sánchez didn't choose to have her hen in Bournemouth?). Hundreds of pounds spent on flights to places like Berlin and Majorca. Hundreds more frittered on hen party merch – T-shirts, sashes, 'Team Hen' badges. Have you been on the 'Last Night of Freedom' website, recently? One of the biggest emporiums for hen party tat, its penis piñatas (I'm so sorry) are on sale, if you're looking.
Yet more money spent on 'entertainment' – fascinator-making classes, macaron-making classes, flower arranging, and prosecco and crudités handed round by 'butlers in the buff' – male students who dress up as naked butlers to help cover their tuition fees, their blushes just about covered in front (but not at the back) by an apron. (Is this OK these days, I've often wondered, while politely accepting a carrot baton from one of these gentlemen. How do we square a group of 30-something women giggling over a naked male bottom, when I suspect most of those present would be aggrieved were their other halves to visit a strip joint on a stag weekend. It's unclear whether Sánchez's hen party featured half-naked students. Perhaps even Sánchez baulked at that.)
'Could you all please transfer me £436 by Monday,' comes one of the increasingly hectoring emails from the maid of honour, in the months and weeks leading up to the big weekend. Although it's no fun being the maid of honour and sending these emails out, either, because you get endless replies from attendees saying, 'I'm pregnant and not drinking, so can I pay a bit less?' or, 'I can't come to the bowling, can you take that out of my total?'
One 30-something friend, right in the middle of hen party madness, says she's just turned down a hen in Italy on the basis it was going to cost her nearly £1,000, and now the bride isn't speaking to her. I have seen this so many times – seemingly rational women, who grumble about other people's hen parties, but come their own they turn quite Marie Antoinette. It's my turn, seems to be the belief, and if it bankrupts you, well, too bad.
Although this summer, you may be off to a spa weekend rather than a 48-hour drinkathon in Harrogate or Palma. A zen do, if you will. According to a recent survey by the wedding website Hitched.co.uk, brides are increasingly opting for calmer, more relaxing 'experiences' – meditation and yoga instead of penis straws and vodka shots. Not that this makes them any cheaper. Two days of drifting about a hotel in a dressing gown with a few treatments thrown in will still set you back a few hundred quid. And all this before the cost of the wedding.
I've had magnificent times on hen dos. There was the time we all stayed in a bright pink house in Essex, its exterior walls genuinely fuchsia. It's designed for hen parties and photo shoots, and the interiors look like Barbie's boudoir – shagpile sofas, furry headboards, heart-shaped cushions, heart-shaped lamps, heart-shaped mirrors. I slept in the 'love kitten' bedroom, with leopard-print walls and bedding, and found something unmentionable under the bed. That one sticks in the memory. Also, the time that the model arrived at our Cotswolds Airbnb for a life drawing class, emerged from the downstairs loo in his dressing gown and a cloud of Lynx, told me politely that posing in the nude was his hobby and that he worked in IT in Reading during the week. Terrific. I've been to burlesque classes, drag acts, played 823 rounds of Mr and Mrs and the Knicker Game (don't ask), and cried with laugher at most of them. Can't put a price on friendship, can you? And yet.
I hope Sánchez's hen party was similarly silly, although from the looks of the Oscar de la Renta frocks and £4,500 handbags, they took it more seriously than we did in Essex. 'Forever starts with friendship, surrounded by the women who've lifted me up, illuminated my path in dark times, and shaped my heart along the way,' she wrote on Instagram, below a snap of the gang posing on a Parisian rooftop.
Yes, all right, all right, Lauren. Lovely stuff, but where's your fake veil and bride-to-be sash? Still, I would probably have gone along, if only because I don't imagine anyone was emailing anyone else come Monday morning saying 'Sorry girls, we overspent in the bar on Saturday night, so could you all transfer me another £17?'