The Nashville Bachelorette Party Industrial Complex

[CHEERING SOUNDS, CARS HONKING]

TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: Over the past decade, Nashville has been taken over by a new kind of visitor.

[MUSIC]

[NEWSCAST]

NEWSCASTER: The city isn’t just known for country music, it’s also apparently the bachelorette party capital of the country.
NEWSCASTER 2: We are number one.
BACHELORETTE: Same [bleep] forever baby!

TM: Bachelorettes and their friends, flocking to the city for a weekend to celebrate their upcoming weddings.

[CHEERING]

TM: They’re easy to spot and impossible to miss.

[NASHVILLE BACHELORETTES DOCUMENTARY]

BACHELORETTE 1: This bach party was brought to you by…
BACHELORETTE 2: My probation expiration!
BACHELORETTE 3: My nip slip! [Laughter]
BACHELORETTE 4: Tequila shots!

TM: And Nashville residents aren’t too fond of them.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

RESIDENT: Bachelorettes are like the people that go door to door selling magazine subscriptions. Once you open the door, it’s really hard to get them to leave.
SARAH FYE: As a citizen of Nashville, I feel like everybody else. I hate them.
JUGG SISTERS: They’re just so effin’ loud.

[CHEERING]

TM: To learn more about this phenomenon, we went to local writer and comedian, Ben Oddo. Just last year, he helped create a documentary called Nashville Bachelorettes. You can find it on YouTube.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BEN ODDO, PRODUCER: Look, I don’t know if bachelorettes are the worst thing to happen to Nashville or the best, but I intend to find out.

TM: He interviewed residents, city officials, tourism industry workers, and — yup — bachelorettes.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BO: As a local journalist, this was my dream assignment, my chance to venture into something that no man has been dumb enough to venture into before, hoping to answer the million-dollar question: What in the holy matrimony is going on here?

[CHEERING]

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: From WHYY, this is Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa. And in this episode, we’re in Nashville, following Ben on his quest to figure out why the city is now flooded with bachelorette parties. When did this whole thing start, and are these pre-wedding weekends really that bad?

That’s coming up, after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

TM: Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

PRODUCER: Do you have any nervous energy walking into a room full of women that you’ve never met before?
BO: Uhh, no. I mean, yeah, it’s weird. It’s weird so there’s nothing to lose, right? I don’t know… there’s nothing… yeah, a little nervous. Do I seem nervous?
PRODUCER: You’ve never been on a girls’ trip. You’ve never been a part of the bachelorette party, right?
BO: Yeah, but I have a mom, so I get it.

[MUSIC]

TM: For the documentary, Ben joined a bachelorette party of women he had never met before. They came to Nashville from other parts of the country to celebrate their friend, Kat.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

WOMAN 1: To Camp Kitty!
BO: Oh is that what this is called? Camp Kitty?
WOMAN 2: Cheers.
BO: Rawr. [Laughter]

TM: He met up with the women of Camp Kitty at their Airbnb. There were bridal games, monogrammed cups, and personalized pink pajamas for all the bridesmaids.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BO: What are you guys wearing? What are these?
WOMAN 1: Jammies. They’re pajamas.
BO: Do you keep this after this weekend? And did you guys buy outfits for this weekend?
WOMAN 2: We bought outfits for this weekend, and, yeah, we keep these after. We ordered these.
BO: I just didn’t know if people got rid of them.

TM: Over the course of the weekend, Kat and her friends were visited by private chefs and male strippers. Camp Kitty is a good example of what happens during many bachelorette parties — and how big the industry has gotten.

BETH MONTEMURRO: We really put a lot of emphasis on, in American society, that getting married is a huge deal, which, evidenced by the amount of money that people spend on weddings and the amount of attention that we see to weddings.

TM: Beth Montemurro is a sociology professor at Penn State. In the ‘90s and early 2000s, she spent a lot of time researching bachelorette parties and wrote a book about them.

BM: It is a relatively recent phenomenon, you know, this is something that really has not been institutionalized for, maybe we’re looking at 30 years as part of a regular pre-wedding practice.

TM: It may be recent, but it’s also fast-growing. More than 30,000 bachelorette parties booked a weekend in Nashville in 2022 alone — up from 13,000 the year before. And the bachelor and bachelorette party industry in the U.S. is worth about $17 billion.

BM: So, you see things like businesses starting to cater to bachelorettes. And so that shift also from being, kind of, like, a dinner, or a night out, or an event in someone’s home, to being much more of a public thing, and a thing in which there’s an industry that develops around it. And the industry is not just the clubs, but it’s also like the phallic merchandise. It’s the veils. It’s all the props that women use as part of bachelorette parties.

[MUSIC]

TM: Bachelorette party trips have quickly become an essential milestone for many women. Or at least for the ones who can afford them. On average, brides-to-be and their friends spend about $11,000 on a single weekend.

[SOUND OF CASH REGISTER DINGING]

And cities like Scottsdale, Charleston, Las Vegas, and especially Nashville, have jumped on board, eagerly inviting these groups and their tourism dollars.

BM: I understand that some people don’t like them because they’re loud and messy, but they’re bringing a lot to the city as well in terms of tourism and revenue.

TM: Now, there are dozens of companies that help groups organize these trips, like travel agents do for vacations. Kat and her friends worked with one that markets itself as a, quote, “luxury bachelor and bachelorette party-planning service.”

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

SARAH FYE: All right, here we go. One, two, three, pedal!
BO: Wow. This is fun.

TM: Ben told us he wanted to try one of Nashville’s most popular activities for bridal groups.

BO: Sarah is one of the pedal operators for Nashville Pedal Tavern, which, it is what it sounds like, they’re these rolling beer carts that go through the streets of downtown Nashville and Midtown and whatever with people on there. And they’re hooting and they’re hollering, and they’re drinking beer, and belting out lyrics, and causing traffic.

TM: She’s used to it.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

SF: So we have, about 60% of our business is bachelorette parties.
BO: 60%?
SF: 60%.
BO: And what do you think of the bachelorettes? What do you think of them?
SF: So, as a pedal tavern driver and a person who works with bachelorette parties all the time, I have to say, I generally enjoy them. But as a citizen of Nashville, when I’m off duty, yeah, no I hate them.
BO: You feel conflicted?
SF: I feel like everybody else. I hate them. I have a torrid relationship. It’s complicated.
BO: OK. That’s all right. Love is complicated.
SF: Yeah, love is complicated.

TM: For her party, Kat and her friends booked a mural walking tour hosted by a Nashville photographer.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

CHRISTY HUNTER: We’re having fun. Hey, ladies! I’m Christy Hunter. I will be your host and photographer today.

TM: Christy brings bachelorette groups on tours of the city’s public art — and takes photos for them to post on Instagram. Ben decided to tag along.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

CH: Sexy Mermaids think mermaid. Yes. Project mermaid. That’s it, ladies.

[SOUND OF CAMERA SHUTTERING]

BO: I just washed up on the ocean.
CH: Yes, honeys. [Laughter]

TM: She says bachelorette parties make up most of her business.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BO: How many photo walk tours would you say you give a week? High season?
CH: High season, about 20. So we’ve had about 3,000 people come through over the last four years. And, I would say about, like, 50 to 60% is bachelorette parties.
BO: They are just a juggernaut. My perception of Photo Walk Nashville, your business, is that, like, you have benefited immensely, immensely from the bachelorette culture here in Nashville.
CH: I’m grateful for them for sure. I’m very grateful.
BO: That was a “I’m… grr… Grateful.” [Laughter]

[MUSIC]

TM: Christy’s grateful for the revenue, but she’s afraid these groups are permanently changing the culture of Nashville.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

CH: My concerns and worries are that the influx is too much and too soon and that there’s not a little bit of a steady rate of it. That there’s just this huge influx. They’re all coming in at once on the same dates, they’re picking the same, you know, weekends, and that the city just the infrastructure of the city…
BO: Can it sustain it?
CH: Yea, can’t sustain it.

TM: And she’s not the only one who’s concerned.

BO: So, the Jugg sisters, they are two real-life sisters named Sheri Lynn and Brenda Kay. They’re in about their early to mid-60s. And they have a bus comedy tour company called Nash Trash Tours. They have outlawed bachelorettes from coming on their bus tours. So they’ve made their position on the bachelorettes very clear.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

JUGG SISTERS: You can take your penis straws and your penis hats and your penis gloves and your penis rings, penis cups, and your penis pacifiers… I mean, we love the penis, but don’t come on our tour no more.
BEN: You take no [bleep].
JUGG SISTERS: We take no [bleep]. And they’re just so effin’ loud. Yeah, and they’re in open air buses, too, and then the bachelorettes, they puke over the side. So, that’s a safety issue right there.
BEN: Could you ever see a world where you would…
JUGG SISTERS: Where there were no bachelorettes? From your mouth to God’s ears.

TM: Ben kept hearing this sort of thing from the people he talked to. The bachelorette party groups are loud, they’re drunk, they might puke on the street. The complaining started to feel unfair. Maybe even a little sexist.

[MUSIC]

BO: I was getting a little sick of the one-sided absolutism about the bachelorettes, because the narrative from locals is, “They stink, they’re ruining it, they’re loud, they’re messy.” And it’s like, “Come on,” like, “Are we being honest with ourselves? Are they really this awful thing we’re making them out to be?”

TM: More on that, after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

TM: Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.

In his mission to understand this hot-button issue, Ben found himself wondering: Are the bachelorette parties really that bad? And if Nashville is losing its culture, are these women to blame?

He went to the man who helped make the city cool: Butch Spyridon. Butch ran the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation for 23 years, and he’s been described as, “the man behind music city.”

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BUTCH SPYRIDON: We don’t market to bachelorette parties, but we’ve built a pretty good product.

TM: He told Ben that the whole bachelorette party craze sort of happened by accident. And the parties aren’t as big of a presence as you might think.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BS: If I guess that we had 100 groups a week, and the average size is 10, which, the average size is about 10, that would be 52,000 girls a year, out of 16 million visitors. So let’s double it. I’m gonna say I’m wrong. So it’s 100, even if it’s 200,000, it’s a very small percentage, but very visible, very loud, and not everybody likes visible and loud.
BO: Right.
BS: But they pay some of our bills, so I’m not going to, I’m not going to dog them.

TM: This is part of a larger change that’s been happening in Nashville for decades.

[SOUND OF A MIC CHECK IN A NOISY BAR]

It’s a change that Tom Morales helped make happen. Ben talked to Tom for his documentary.

TOM MORALES: It was porn shops and pawn shops in the late ‘70s into the ‘80s.

TM: Tom is a lifelong Nashvillian, and the owner of a honky tonk on Broadway called Acme Feed and Seed. He said it’s taken a lot of work from officials and local business owners to transform the city.

TOM MORALES: We started an event called Dancing in the District. And we ran for 10 years. And by the end of the 10 years, it was a free outdoor party. It was the biggest happy hour in, probably in the South. We had acts, music acts, that were either on their way up or their way down. That’s the only way we could afford them. But it changed the face of Lower Broad. After that 10 years, there was 40 bars and restaurants that had opened. And so that is where it changed the face. It was all, and that was done by local people coming back downtown. That is what brought the new energy back downtown. Lower Broad was always seedy, I mean, but a creative-type seedy.

[SOUND OF LIVE MUSIC PLAYING, APPLAUSE]

TM: But over time, the culture Tom helped create took on a life of its own.

TOM MORALES: Probably about 2015, we started to fall in love with ourselves is what I say. We started thinking we were the IT City and forgot that we were the Music City, and bigger is better and, throw a party in the street, guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to have a party in the street, and some of the people are going to puke in the street, and all of a sudden you went from PG to R-rated. And then you got bachelorettes coming. And, you know, it’s a double-edged sword. A skunk gets his reputation from the advertising it gives himself.

TM: But here’s the thing: Tom doesn’t think it’s the bachelorettes’ fault.

TOM MORALES: Well, I think they’re definitely scapegoats. I mean, the bachelorettes, they’re a group of 10, 12 girls that are there to get, you know, they’re not the problem.

[MUSIC]

TM: Tom told Ben he doesn’t want to exclude the brides and their friends from the city. Quite the opposite.

[DOCUMENTARY]

TOM MORALES: The bachelorettes are integral to what Nashville has become. And I don’t mind.
BO: So the bachelorettes are innocent this whole time?
TOM MORALES: Yeah, that, bachelorettes, man, they just came and kept us alive.

TM: He’s got some ideas for how Nashville can find itself again.

TOM MORALES: We need to recapture the moniker Music City and it be what it once was, which was a discovery platform. We want people to come here for the music and bypass the places that are just tourist traps.

TM: At this point in the making of his documentary, Ben started to realize that, when it comes to the bachelorette parties, Nashvillians hold some responsibility too.

[DOCUMENTARY]

BO: What I’m just now realizing, because I’m slow, Tom, and I’m not actually a real journalist, is, so many people, locals, you know, they point the finger at the bachelorette and they say, “Look at them.” And your approach is kind of saying, you point the finger at yourself and say, “Let’s give them an authentic experience. They’re coming here no matter what. It is what it is. So we can either give them this sort of fabricated idea of Nashville, or we can show them the real thing and, you know, kind of let the chips fall where they may.” Right?
TOM MORALES: That’s absolutely true.

TM: Coming to the end of his journey, Ben realized the bachelorettes aren’t all that different from the rest of us.

BO: The thing that sort of annoyed me about the collective response amongst Nashvillians towards the bachelorettes was like, “Hey, who among us hasn’t gone on one of these weekends and, like, made a fool of ourselves in some city? Like we are all guilty of this.”

TM: The real problem is the greed at the heart of the industry — the way brands cheapen the culture of Nashville to market it to bachelorette parties.

BO: I guess the point there is that, Nashville and a lot of cities like this have sort of become victims of their own success because what was once authentic has now become a brand.

TM: A lot of people told Ben that the tourism problem in their city is bigger than any one group of visitors.

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

SF: There’s sometimes I’m down here and I’m like, “Man, this is getting really cheesy.” Because it’s not just pedal taverns now. It’s party buses. It’s tractors.

INTERVIEWEE: It can be offensive to locals like building a city for tourists when you’re losing some real gems, when it’s about, like, profit and short-term greed. And I think that’s where my problem is with this, is it’s not about the girls. It’s not about the bachelorettes. But it’s about building a city for others without a long-term perspective of how it affects the culture of a place.

TM: After days of pounding the pavement and interviewing people all over Nashville, Ben went back to where he started: Camp Kitty.

[MUSIC]

[DOCUMENTARY CLIP]

BO: Hanging out with Kat and her friends, I got the sense they have no idea they are in the crosshairs of this local culture war. And it doesn’t matter. What matters to them is that they were here for one another.

WOMAN 1: For me, personally, I think that being able to spend time with girls is really big for me, because I moved to where I don’t know anybody. And so, I think having friendships that last a lifetime is really something that I want in my life. And I think that that’s something that every girl would love.

WOMAN 2: Each of these girls has their, you know, addition to what Kat’s doing in her life and what they’ve meant to her. And I’ve seen that when she was growing up. So to put that together and be like, I knew you could do it, type thing, you picked the right ones. [Laughter]

WOMAN 3: I knew they were super busy, and I knew everyone had different things going on in their lives. It just made me feel really happy and excited and honestly, like, blessed to have all these girls come together.

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: In the season finale of Peak Travel…

MALIKA INONK [TRANSLATED FROM INDONESIAN]: People think if you want freedom and comfort, just come to Bali, because in Bali, they are free to do anything they might not be able to do in their home country.

TM: Bali was once known primarily for its idyllic landscapes and rich Hindu culture. Then came social media.

ADRIAN VICKERS: The Instagram thing and TikTok, they’ve changed the nature of those destinations. So there are places that nobody much knew about before, and everybody had to then, of course, get their photos taken in that same place.

TM: We’ll learn how the images we post affect the places we visit — and how, as travelers, we can clean up our act.

That’s next time, on Peak Travel.

This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

We had production help on this episode from Ben Oddo. You can watch the Nashville Bachelorettes documentary by producers Ben Oddo and Mike Leavitt from MFIC Entertainment on YouTube.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music, mixing, and sound design by Catherine Anderson. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Additional Production: Ben Oddo
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music, Mixing, and Sound Design: Catherine Anderson
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

The Nashville Bachelorettes documentary, by producers Ben Oddo and Mike Leavitt from MFIC Entertainment, is available on YouTube.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.