henparty.ie

Accessible hen party disaster

We needed a fully accessible hen party, and I outlined this several times, but when we got to each event, nothing was fully wheelchair friendly. In the first venue, our hen couldn’t use the bathroom at all, and in that same venue we were booked in for Pastels and Prosecco on the 3rd floor - the pub had no lift!! Then for the dinner, we had two separate tables instead of one large one (there were only 9 of us altogether), so we were split up for most of the time (we ended up being split up at Pastels and Prosecco too due to having to sit basically in the entryway of the pub in two separate snugs). The dinner venue had a wheelchair friendly toilet, but to access it you had to go outside and down a few doors, which was insane. The late venue was ok but was more like just a pub as the lighting was pretty bright and it didn’t feel like a club, so it was more awkward than anything - but because it was half club, half pub, it was that bit loud that we couldn’t talk to each other but also couldn’t play any games etc so we ended up just sitting there, looking at each other all creepy like. Our accommodation was cheap and dated, with no reception area etc, and again had stairs that curved which was even more difficult for our hen with mobility needs. When we went to the spa, they asked us to pay, even though we’d already squared things off with henparty.ie - we also had to wait for an hour and a half for a platter of finger food to arrive at our first event (Pastels and Prosecco), and since the spa was a good 20 minute walk from the first event, we had to leave shortly after the food arrived as henparty.ie don’t look after transport etc. It was hard to get answers from Melissa too, I had asked about room configurations etc for about two weeks before I actually received them. Then when I did (the day before the hen!), I contacted the accommodation myself and they confirmed that we had three triple rooms, but one of them was only a double bed and a single. So I had to push for another room so that our hens didn’t have to share a bed - for the money we paid, we should all have had our own room, but not only did we have to share rooms, some of us were almost expected to begin a co-sleeping journey!All in all, I could have organised this myself and done a better job. I went with a company because I just genuinely didn’t have the time to organise such a busy event, but in hindsight I would have been better off getting a max of 2 hours of sleep per night for a few weeks and just doing it myself. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone - half of the hens probably now think that I am an idiot, or that I don’t care about my sister because this was so disastrous, which couldn’t be further from the truth (maybe I am an idiot for outsourcing this, but I love my sister to absolute bits and wanted it to be the best possible for her, hence why I am so annoyed). I am raging that something that was so expensive and still somehow time consuming for me turned out so badly.

Date of experience: Feb 15, 2025