For my sister’s bachelorette party we (her bridesmaids) chose the destination of Nashville, TN. Nineteen women from all over the country came together to celebrate someone we all love – my sister, Lauren.  We had an absolutely fabulous time mostly because the group of women were all fantastic, but I also can’t say enough about the city of Nashville.  I would most definitely recommend it for a fun destination weekend!  Below is a detailed account of our itinerary along with links and short reviews of the tours, accommodations and attractions we visited.

Itinerary:

Thursday

Dinner at Merchants and Live Music on Broadway:

A handful of the guests arrived on Thursday night with everyone else arriving on Friday.  On Thursday night we headed down to Broadway Street where we enjoyed dinner at Merchants.  Merchants has several wonderful reviews on Yelp and it lived up to its expectations.  The food was fabulous and the Duck Fat Tater Tots were outstanding.  It is a small restaurant that is located right on Broadway in a building that has historical character but has been updated well.  We then wandered from live music joint to live music joint listening to country music, dancing and enjoying the attention that our pink cowboy hats brought – no one was going to miss us!

Friday 

Breakfast at the Pancake Pantry:

We kicked off the day with breakfast at the Pancake Pantry.  From what I have heard, the line wraps around the building on the weekends so we figured we would go on Friday so that we could miss the rush.  While the line wasn’t wrapped all the way around the establishment on Friday, it was out the door and almost reached the street.  With that being said, the restaurant does a good job of keeping the line moving and offers coffee for while you wait.  I am not a breakfast connoisseur (it is just not my favorite meal of the day), but the food was very good and I think we all agreed that our favorite dish was the Sante Fe Cornmeal Pancakes.

Gaylord Opryland Resort:

We toured the three atriums at the Opryland Resort and had lunch inside (or was it outside?)  You almost forget that you are inside a hotel due to the beautiful atriums:

We are standing on an inside bridge inside one of the atriums in the photo above.  The hotel is a must see (similar to how if you are in Vegas then you must go see Bellagio – When in Nashville you must go see the Opryland Hotel).  The hotel is about a 20 minute drive from the downtown Broadway St area and is right next to the Grand Ole Opry and the Opry Mills Mall.  It was a nice activity for a quiet and relaxing Friday afternoon and since we had the time I am glad that we made our way out there.

Tootsies:

From the Opryland Hotel we drove down to Tootsies on Broadway Street at about 3:00 in the afternoon so that those who arrived early enough on Friday could experience some live music on Broadway Street.  We went to the upstairs back part of the bar and were able to get a spot right in front of the band.  This bar was so much fun and it was great to be able to find live music in the middle of the afternoon!  The bride-to-be, Lauren, was front and center:

Hoedown House Party with Games and BBQ:

The majority of our group activities started Friday evening at the house so that as the rest of our group arrived they could meet us at a central location and drop off their luggage.  We were able to find a house on the Vacation Rental By Owner (VRBO) website that accommodated almost all of us.  It was incredibly clean and you could tell that the owner took pride in the historical property that has been in her family for generations.  The house advertises that it sleeps 10-15, however by sleeping 15 they are accounting  for some people sleeping on blow up mattresses that they provide (there are beds for 10).  We were just happy to find a home big enough for our large group especially in the family room and dining room areas where we were all able to mingle together during house activities.  I would recommend this property in a heartbeat.  It was about a 10 minute $10 taxi ride with 4  people to downtown.

We nicknamed this house “Lauren’s Log Castle”:
The house party on Friday night was a wonderful way to kick off the weekend and allowed everyone to get acquainted with everyone else (especially since we would be sharing beds and air mattresses).  We ordered take-out food from a local BBQ restaurant called Jack’s Bar-B-Que who offers catering and bulk ordering menus for groups.  It was very reasonably priced and the food was delicious – we didn’t have many leftovers which is always a good sign!

We had a variety of activities and “games” on Friday night including a panties party, a boot signing, informal photoshoot of cowgirl poses, kisses and wishes activity and of course we ended on a whole house girls dance party!  For details on games and activities check out this link!

Saturday’s Line-Up:

We had a fun-packed day on Saturday!  There was a poster in the house displaying the events so that everyone knew exactly what the plan was and where to be at what time.  I was so incredibly impressed by this group of girls who were always on time or early! 

9:00 AM: Pajama Party Breakfast

We had a breakfast buffet set up on the dinging room table with fruit salad, breakfast casseroles, bagels and cream cheese, yogurt, granola and orange juice and coffee.  We needed to make sure these girls were prepared for the coming day!

10:00 AM: Yoga Detox

The bride, Lauren, loves yoga. She is actually a yoga certified instructor, but at this time just practices on a regular basis.  Because she is a yogi we incorporated one of her favorite pastimes into the weekend.  We knew it would be good for everyone to get some stretching and twisting in before moving onto to the rest of the days activities which primarily included drinking and dancing.  We had 100% participation from the guests and can you believe that we fit 19 yoga mats into the Log Cabin’s family room!?  For fun we had everyone put on their pink cowboy hats for the photos.

Here is the left side of the room
We found a local yoga studio called Sanctuary for Yoga that was able to set us up with a yoga instructor to come to the house…along with 19 yoga mats!   Our contact at the yoga studio was Daphne and the instructor’s name who taught the class was Melissa.  She did a wonderful job teaching a class for all levels – we had some girls who had never done yoga before and others who practice on a daily basis.Here is the right side of the room

12:15 PM Party Bus Pick-Up

To make sure that no one was left behind we scheduled a minibus to pick us up from the house and take us to our group tour.  The company we used was Signature Transportation and they had a 22 passenger mini bus that was $125/trip.  After doing lots of research on transportation, this place offered the best price.  They ended up running a little late to pick us up however I think that it was due to a typo in their system and an honest mistake.  They were very apologetic about the mistake and I would still recommend them due to their competitive pricing and very luxurious clean and updated buses!  Just call ahead and make sure they have the address right in their system!

12:45 PM Music City Pub Crawl Tour

I can’t say enough about this tour!  Our tour guide was Linley and she provided a wonderful balance of historical information about the city of Nashville while introducing us to fun bars that we may not have found on our own.  The Bar Crawl Tour includes a few trivia games if you are interested and Linley made it very interactive while also allowing 19 of us to chat and sing and dance our way through the bar crawl.  At each bar you are given specials for coming as a group through Linley’s tour.  

In the photo above we are all lined up on one of the bars that we visited.  We finished at a karaoke bar and ended up staying for several hours after the tour ended as we each got up and got our spotlight with a microphone in Nashville!  The bride, whom loves to sing, really got to be in the spotlight here!  As part of the tour they make sure that the bride gets up on stage (if she wants to) shortly after arriving into the bar.

3:30 PM Naptime or Playtime

This was free time for the girls.  Some went back to the rental house and took a nap, some just stopped at the house for a change of clothes and freshen up and others stayed out downtown.  We all met back downtown for the 1st Saturday Art Crawl.

6:00 PM 1st Saturday Art Crawl

This event is free to the public in Nashville on select 1st Saturdays in a month.  Their calendar can be found on their website along with a map of where to find the art galleries.  We walked through several galleries, however we felt slightly out of place in our get-up cowgirl attire (including the pink hats).  This could be a fun event if you are with a group who loves art, but I don’t know if I would recommend it for a large bachelorette party that has been drinking during the day…  Some of the art galleries do offer a free drink, however if they say they are alcoholic – they are mixed so much that it isn’t worth your time for the free drink…  Go for the art, not for the drinks.  Still, I am glad that we tried it and I think it is a nice cultural event that the city of Nashville has for the public.

7:45 PM Dinner at Past Perfect Restaurant

We were able to make reservations for all of us at Past Perfect Restaurant.  The gentleman I spoke with, Shawn, highly recommended that we have prepaid appetizers and because of this we also got a private area for dinner.  The nice part of prepaying for the appetizers was that they were there when we arrived and boy were we hungry!  We devoured most of the appetizers and everyone still ordered dinner.  They are known for their interesting burgers.  We all loved their house made hummus – we scraped the bowl clean!  It is hard to find a place that will take reservations this close to the “happening area” on Broadway so this is a definite bonus for this restaurant if you have a large group.  We were less than 2 blocks from Broadway so after dinner we were able to walk to our next destination easily.

9:30 PM Line Dancing Class at Wildhorse Saloon

We ended up finishing dinner about 9:30 and we got to the Wildhorse Saloon by 9:45.  There is a cover charge to enter of $6/person.  They do accept credit cards for their cover charge which is nice if you don’t have cash.  We weren’t sure ahead of time so we had cash for everyone, but if I had known I don’t think I would have carried that much cash.  This place is awesome!  Check out their website because it is very informative.  They offer free line dancing classes periodically throughout the night so we planned to attend the 10:15 – 11:00 PM class.  They teach one line dance on the stage and all of us girls were trying to learn the dance.  Most got it down by the end and were pretending to be line dance professionals the rest of the night at every other bar we went to taking over the dance floors and having other passerby’s try to join in!  It was fun! 🙂

11:30 PM Bar Hopping on Broadway

You can’t believe the live music that is on Broadway!  The street is just lined with bars with live music playing up and down the street – it is almost magical!  We line danced from bar to bar the rest of the evening.

2:00 AM Bus Pick-Up To Take Home

Again, so that we wouldn’t leave anyone behind we scheduled another bus pick-up using signature transportation.  They text you the name of your driver along with their phone number about 45 minutes prior to pick-up.  It is nice to be able to communicate directly with your driver because for example, we were not at the location we had originally decided to meet at.  So we were able to talk with the driver about where we were located exactly so that he could pick us up!  We really felt like we were riding in style!

Sunday

9:00 AM Hangover Helper Breakfast

We had a spread of breakfast foods (and all the other leftovers) on the dining room table at the VRBO.  Everyone got a nice breakfast before heading to the airport or making the long drive back home.

11:00 AM Depart

Everyone went their separate ways and sent the bride their best wishes through a kiss!  We kissed the mat on a frame so that a fun picture of all the girls from the weekend could be added later.  Only 90 days to the wedding from the end of the bachelorette party where we can all celebrate together again!

Invitations:

A basic schedule of the weekend’s activities (they were altered slightly from the invite) was mailed to all guests along with the formal invitation. We found the invitations on an Etsy store called McBooboo’s and had them printed at Staples onto card stock.  I love the design of the invitation and the store owner was wonderful to work with when personalizing the invite for our event. I would recommend this Etsy store again, however next time I would have the store itself do the printing.  I was not happy with the quality of card stock from Staples and ended up doing some printing myself and glueing two pieces of card stock together with the schedule on the backside of the invitation.

So that was our weekend in Nashville!

Does it sound enticing to you?  I have visited Nashville now a few times and every time I fall in love with the city more and more!  If you have any questions about the venues or activities that we used just post in the comments section below!

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