Stag dos

When asked by a parent how I would be spending my summer holidays, I told them that one of my jobs was to arrange a friend’s stag-do as part of my best man duties. “Willy straws, L-plates, very dodgy Chippendales from East Kilbride and a drunken minibus ride home is what I can remember from mine” she told me, “but last year I had the best week of my life. We spent a year planning it’ she continued. “We flew into a castle in the Balearics by helicopter, had Michelin-starred caterers and a fireworks display after supper.” To say I was taken aback would be an understatement, on a number of counts. “It’s the kind of upscale romance that girls dream of for their honeymoon, not a hen do,” my fiancée (thankfully?) reassured me. But the more I explore the options, the more I am coming to realise that stag dos are, like weddings, a distasteful concoction of social standing, taste and popularity! Surely the stag is supposed to be much more inexpensive and insignificant compared to the “I do”?!