Four trips and $3,200 later, the bachelorette party trend is a steep expense for Long Islanders

Brittany Lovisi has been a bridesmaid nine times — and she’s getting married this July.

By the time her wedding rolls around, she will have attended 10 bachelorette celebrations. Lovisi, of Lake Ronkonkoma, has been everywhere from Patchogue to Mexico to celebrate her best friends’ bridal bliss. But it always comes with a cost.

“I went to Nashville twice, 50 weeks apart,” says Lovisi, 31. Last year alone, she spent about $3,200, including $1,429 for a bachelorette trip to Scottsdale (including airfare, Airbnb, decorations, food, Uber and activities) and $544 for the Poconos (for the Airbnb, food and decorations, not including gas and toll costs).

Bachelorette culture has changed, Lovisi says. Parties have turned into weekend trips, and those trips have now become getaways spanning up to five days.

According to the most recent data compiled by The Knot, a wedding planning company, one in two attendees spent more than $300 on a bachelorette party on average in 2021.

When the celebration takes place in cities such as New York City, Miami, or Las Vegas (which were among the most popular bachelorette destinations of 2021, according to The Knot), that number goes up 61%.

That means one in five partygoers is actually spending closer to $1,000 or more on bachelorette trips, per The Knot's findings.

Lovisi is among many other bridesmaids across Long Island who have paid for a long weekend trip — complete with plane tickets and hotel or Airbnb reservations — in addition to the expenses that come with a wedding. Some agree that social media has caused a new pressure to splurge.

"I think the bar for weddings and bachelorette parties has been raised immensely," says Gabrielle Mirasola, who runs a Facebook group called The Long Island Wedding Connection for brides. "TikTok has become a huge thing for brides. When you start scrolling for bachelorette ideas, you see all these brides on these amazing trips and think, 'Wow, I want that.'"

But for these brides, the bottom line is this: It’s not about the destination, it’s about the people coming with you.

Heather Cunningham, who created the Facebook group Brides of Long Island in 2016, had her own bachelorette celebration in Austin, Texas before her 2017 wedding. She says most people are opting for bachelorette trips over a night out to celebrate.

“Nashville is a very popular destination,” Cunningham says. “Austin, Miami, Vegas. The Poconos picked up speed after COVID because it’s away, but not that far away.”

Mirasola, a luxury wedding planner, notes that Nashville, Miami and Talum, Mexico have become popular bachelorette spots, usually selected by the bride.

"They will price it out to see if it's affordable for the bridesmaids, and then present it to the group. The majority of bridesmaids do not pay for the bride."

Costs add up quickly — for example, Mirasola recently attended a bachelorette trip in Miami. The bride, who is Mirasola's business partner, rented a yacht as part of the celebration. With 10 people for four hours, that came to $2,600 total, plus $750 for decorations. With an outfit itinerary to follow for the weekend (so the bridesmaids and bride could match wherever they went), Mirasola spent hundreds.

"This bride is more luxurious and wanted elevated bachelorette experience," she says. "And the new trend is to synchronize outfits."

And sometimes taking a local trip — for example, renting a house on the East End of Long Island — ends up costing around the same amount as flying somewhere, Cunningham notes.

“The house rentals are pretty expensive,” she says. “A lot of them require multiple nights and it can be thousands of dollars. And going out in the Hamptons is not cheap.”

Sometimes bridal parties decide to pay for additional experiences as a gift to the bride. For example, hiring a private chef or masseuse is common, Cunningham says.

Melissa Siegel from St. James and her eight bridesmaids flew to Nashville last April.

“I wasn’t the first in my group of friends to get married,” says Siegel, 32. “A lot of their bachelorettes were already done out east on Long Island, so I wanted to do something different.”

With her bridesmaids living in a few different states, they determined Nashville would be the best meeting point for them all. They booked an Airbnb, which came out to $283 per person, she says.

“The airfare was definitely more expensive than I think people were hoping,” Siegel says. The bridesmaids' airfare (including Siegel's, which they split) was $419 total per person, she adds.

The group opted mostly to explore the city on their own instead of paying for tours and group activities, in order to save money. They also used the BACH app, where you can create a weekend schedule, send out group polls and keep track of expenses when it comes time to split bills and reimburse others.

While planning a bachelorette trip, it’s essential to be mindful of your bridal party’s financial situations, Cunningham says. "Just have realistic expectations of what you and your friends want to do", she says. "If someone can’t afford it, that’s OK."

 Not everybody can jump to do a seven-day all inclusive trip to another country.

- Heather Cunningham

Siegel’s biggest tip for brides: “Don’t think of your bachelorette as a vacation,” she says. “It’s just a weekend trip, and it doesn’t need to be this big, grand thing. Instead of focusing on events, focus on being with everybody that loves you, in the same place at the same time.”

JoAnna Rodriguez, of Howard Beach, Queens, had to roll with the punches while planning her wedding. She was supposed to get married in May 2020, and ended up pushing it back by a full year.

“I just have always found it so ridiculous, what bachelorette parties have become,” says Rodriguez, 31. “So I just always knew when my turn came, that I wasn't going to be that bride who expects people to drop thousands of dollars."

The original plan was Atlantic City, since Rodriguez didn’t want to travel too far away. But, “our wedding got postponed, and consequently, my bachelorette got postponed,” she says. 

She and her maid of honor started to look at Airbnb listings and found Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania. 

“I got myself a white jacket,” she says. “We went snow tubing and ATVing, and there was a Jacuzzi at the Airbnb so I still got to wear my bridal bathing suit. In the end it was really simple, and it was fun.”

Rodriguez went on the trip with her maid of honor and a friend. The two-night Airbnb stay was about $200 per person before fees, she says.

“I think there’s pressure with social media to have such a large group,” Rodriguez says. “And you see groups of girls going to Nashville or Arizona or Texas, and some bridal parties go out of the country. I think it’s very easy to compare and feel that pressure to keep up, but I was always the type of bride and, generally, person that I always said, if you put me in a box with my friends, I’m going to have a good time. And that was exactly what happened.”

Alisha James, of Coram, decided to forgo a bachelorette trip altogether and put that money toward building the backyard wedding of her dreams. James did not want to pay for her own share of a trip, while also asking her loved ones to buy their own airfare and hotel stay, too.

“I would say cost had a lot to do with it,” says James, 30. “We were planning our wedding in six months, so I think that’s stressful for any bride. I just thought it would be really unfair of me to ask people so close to me to do things so close to each other, with the expense of it all.”

Sophie Aggarwal, of Dix Hills, had her first bachelorette experience for her boyfriend's sister last August. She says the three-day weekend in the Hamptons was low-key compared to other bachelorette trips: They rented a house, swam in the pool and hired a private chef. In total, Aggarwal says she spent $1,350, with the Airbnb as the top expense ($800 a person for two nights).

Navigating these expenses can be difficult, she says, so in the future, Aggarwal hopes to assist her own bridal party as much as possible.

"I want to make it worth it and reasonable," she says. "If it's me paying for the stay and everyone else pays for their own flights, I would do that to help out, if I'm in the right position in my life."

Lovisi attended four bachelorette parties in 2022. She went to the Poconos and Nashville, then to Scottsdale, Arizona.

She also attended a bachelorette celebration just a few miles from her own home — on Main Street in Patchogue. The group went out to dinner and then headed to Blue Point Brewery and Daisy’s Nashville Lounge, a country-themed bar. In total, Lovisi says she spent just under $130 on dinner, drinks and Uber.

“It was very different,” Lovisi says. “It was a low-key, casual night out on Long Island, and it was very cost effective.”

Although 2022 was busy for Lovisi, this isn’t the first time she’s had to juggle a schedule of bachelorette events.

“In 2015, I went to three bachelorette parties in one summer,” she says. “All within six weeks of each other. That was my first taste of bachelorette party culture. Back then, it was what was in driving distance, a Friday through Sunday mentality."

The culture we have now is different from what we had in 2015, and 20 years ago it was even more different.

- Brittany Lovisi

One thing that also changes all the time: the prices. To alleviate any pressure to spend money, Lovisi says communication is key.

“It can get overwhelming,” she says. “But be a part of the conversation, because then you’ll get stuck with a price tag you’re not happy with. It’s better to communicate than not at all."

For Lovisi’s bachelorette party, she decided to pick a destination that she and her bridesmaids have never visited: Charleston, South Carolina. She spent $473 on her flight, which will be in May.

She doesn't want anyone to feel like they're spending so much money and are uncomfortable with it. "When you get a lot of people together, planning a weekend can get stressful. But the best part is being with all the people you love the most,” she says.

By Rachel Weiss

rachel.weiss@newsday.com@RachMWeiss

Rachel Weiss joined Newsday in 2016. As a real estate/living multimedia reporter, Rachel writes feature stories and contributes to and appears in on-camera video packages. She was the lead reporter on Newsday’s LI Acts of Kindness series.