Raucous single-sex groups of young people tottering down the middle of the road at 2am, asking policemen for selfies and carrying inflatable penises, can signify only one thing: the wedding season is under way.
But with mixed friendship groups the norm, enforced gender segregation on the decline and weddings becoming increasingly extravagant, compulsory fun on separate hen and stag evenings could soon seem a thing of the past.
Ian Lucas, founder of Red7, which offers bespoke travel and party packages, says the company’s mixed travel bookings have grown by 200% in the past two years. “We’ve made a conscious decision to de-gender our stag and hen experiences and appeal to joint parties,” he says. “It’s less about groups of women with L-plates and blokes going wild and more about having special experiences with friends.”
Another online travel agent, StagWeb, says it has noticed a 50% rise in the number of its “sten” or “hag” weekend bookings for 2018. “We are seeing a real demand for mixed-group travel in the 25-to-35-year-old age group,” says Kye Harman, head of PR. “It’s a trend that’s really just starting to take hold, and it’s an area we expect to grow over the next five years.”
Harman believes the increase is partly in response to a closer focus on money. “It is certainly more cost-effective. You can pool resources, and two budgets means you can create more of an event.”
Others say it is because celebrations are going on for longer. One survey found that one in 20 stag or hen dos now drags on for a week.
Matthew Green, 34, from London, is going to two sten dos in the coming months, one of them at the Nation of Gondwana festival near Berlin. “The idea of going to a strip club is so naff – it’s so 80s,” he says. “Stag dos are no longer just people going out for a drink; they’re now three-day trips to foreign festivals, and it’s more of an excuse for a holiday.”
Travel companies such as GoHen even offer their own mini-festivals in honour of the bride and groom. The “sten-fest” includes a live band, glamping and a hog roast, and is one of the firm’s most popular weekend activities.
Another factor is that single-sex celebrations are starting to feel regressive. Friendship groups are increasingly mixed gender, and it can seem like too great a sacrifice not to have male or female friends present on your “last night of freedom”. “Personally, I think the vibes are better when it’s mixed,” says Green. “One night with boys is good banter – but three days with all guys, and the chat gets a bit rubbish. You need girls to mix it up.”
Joe Marsh, from Manchester, agrees. The 31-year-old attended a friend’s hen do last year and is planning a joint event for his own marriage this summer. He says his friendship group is mixed and he would not want anyone excluded from the celebrations because of their sex. “At my do I want to include all of my close friends. I don’t want to go to a strip club or get tied to a lamp-post after drinking 40 pints. Maybe I’m boring but I just want a nice, civilised night which maybe includes a bit of drunken dancing to Britpop.”
Sheila Young, a cultural researcher on marriage at the University of Aberdeen, agrees that people are spending less time in gendered groups and more time in mixed company.
She says that although stag and hen dos give guests the opportunity to engage in collective activities that license otherwise taboo behaviour, such as using bad language and wearing offensive T-shirts, there is some evidence that levels of tolerance for this are decreasing. Other people particularly object when the misbehaviour is exhibited in the daytime in public spaces.
Although the sexes are nowhere near as segregated as they once were, mixed celebrations are far from widespread. “It is a particular type of person that chooses them,” Young says. “They are generally from a higher socioeconomic group, are university educated, and prefer mixed company.”
Some think that change cannot come soon enough. One 33-year-old man from Cambridge, who will be attending a three-day-long stag do in the Netherlands next month and did not want to be named, says he wishes he was going on a mixed trip instead.
“A stag do is a fun thing in itself, and you do get these sweet male bonding experiences, but the problem is that you’re at the whim of what others in the group want to do. If you go somewhere like Hamburg or Amsterdam, then it’s quite clearly because there are prostitutes there,” he says. “It’s embarrassing.”
