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It's time to rethink the modern Hen, writes Thomas Bywater, as raucous pre-wedding parties ruffle the feathers of fellow tourists.
Where they had been hiding them on the 30-minute ferry from Auckland is anyone's guess.
Standing on the pier on Waiheke Island, I was suddenly surrounded by a haze of pink Velcro tutus and disposable L-plates.
What had previously been a boatload of subdued holidaymakers off for a weekend among the vines had become a gaggle of hens and hen-partiers on pre-wedding bashes. I counted at least three brides-to-be among the crowd.
And we hadn't even made it to the wineries.
I'm told the boozy, raucous, "don't tell the boys" sort of hen do is a thing of the past. A relic you still occasionally see dragging a broken heel past Ponsonby Central on a Saturday night.
What used to be seen as a last night of freedom is now just seen as the last night before a couple tie the knot and go back to co-habiting. In fact, most of the bride and groom's circles of friends are likely to know each other and are under no illusion that the upcoming nuptials are going to change any of the group dynamics.
Pre-wedding parties now are more about a celebration of friendship — rather than a final farewell to the life they once knew.
If anything has changed it's the expectations of those attending. Both hens and stags are pushing the envelope and straining the definition of "night" into a long weekend away with friends.
Travel has become an important part of a thoroughly modern hen, with destinations such as Waiheke or Martinborough appealing for their mix of wine tasting or paintballing. One presumes this has more to do with the changing taste of bridal parties than the dearth of male strippers.
People are spending more on their last hurrahs, perhaps because they're marrying later in life. The average age of first-time-brides is now 29, according to Stats NZ — that's five years older than it was two decades ago. With more disposable income and different tastes and expectations from the trip, we are seeing the birth of the "sophisticated stag" or "high-class hen".
The trend is global. In the US, the average cost for a guest to a pre-wedding party is around $220. Then — true to form — Brits make their presence felt on the hen spending table with an average of around $300 per guest. Australian brides-to-be also muster a respectable $210. The cost of a weekend on Waiheke can't be too far off these figures.
Far from worrying about parties of rowdy hens or stags frightening away their clientele, appealing to this high-spending crowd powered by indulgent tastes and a mantra of "no regrets" has proven to be a lucrative business model.
It's a branch of tourism that has the power to completely alter a place.
Anyone who has recently had a break in Prague or Barcelona will be able to attest to this. The chic cafe culture and crowds within the characterful tavernas are disappearing — replaced by stampedes of tourists in matching pink outfits designed for maximum humiliation for the wearer. Almost invariably Brits.
There has been a "stagification" of Eastern European cities. Parties of bachelors from the UK and Ireland might have spread from weekends in Amsterdam or Hamburg's Reeperbahn, and are looking further east to Budapest or Vilnius, where their money stretches a little further.
Under the new council of mayor Femke Halsema, Amsterdam is determined to move beyond its reputation as Europe's preeminent "dirty weekender".
Meanwhile in the States, Las Vegas is the city that wrote the handbook on bachelor parties. A $60 billion tourism industry has grown in the desert, built on the promise of a final bite at the apple of bachelorhood.
Should we fear the creep of bridal parties to these shores? Are we heading for a reboot of The Hangover on the Hauraki Gulf? Probably not.
Auckland's wine island is a long way from the carnage of Amsterdam's Burgwallen. But that's not to say on that day the hens arriving on Waiheke weren't going to have a good go of it.
As coaches came to collect the various parties and spirit them across the bay, it was clearly still an important event for all attending. A rite of passage.
Standing at the precipice at the end of single life, you couldn't help but wish them well.
That is until I saw one party of hens peel off and start filing on to our wineries tour bus. Far from well, I wished them off my coach.
There had been a "cluck up".
Fullers360, the company that runs the ferry service and majority of vineyard bus tours on the island, has a policy of suggesting groups larger than 12 book a private charter of the island.
"Typically, groups celebrating a wedding rightfully tend to focus a bit more on the big life milestone rather than island history as other tour customers do," says Mike Horne, CEO of Fullers360.
Though modern hens are marrying later in life and have more disposable income, the sad truth is that friendship groups are shrinking. Research shows that across Europe and the US — the average size of a hen party has slowly deflated to around 12 guests.
Problematic behaviour is also seeing a downtick, but then there is always a 'vocal minority' who ruin the party for everyone else.
"It's a minority, but a very loud minority that offends people. Yes, I would like them to go other places, but I'm also a realist," said Frans Van der Avert, head of Amsterdam Marketing which is rethinking how "stag tourism" might be made to work for locals and tourists with interests beyond the city liberties.
"We are a free city, and proud of that, but you have to be respectful," he said.
This group we were with can't have been any fewer than 12 but they were making enough of a racket for everyone. In fact they seemed to have commandeered the whole bus.
With each passing winery the group grew louder and the guide at the front of the bus progressively quieter and redder.
Before long our guide had shrunk into submission. With rain bouncing of the windshield and the raucous chants within, the situation was maddening. Following the lead of a Hawaiian couple who had enough, we took our chances and abandoned the bus on the drive of Stonyridge.
Many destinations have shown it is possible to achieve harmony between stag and hen parties around regular bookings. Unfortunately a tour bus seems too small a space to achieve this.
We took shelter from the grey skies at the end of the road, watching the party bus sail by.
'We can make three days feel like a week,' one expert said.