How to Plan a Wicked Halloween Hen Party

Introduction

If you’re planning an early winter wedding, why not combine your wedding celebrations with the spookiest night of the year and conjure up a Halloween hen party?

We’re not necessarily talking bobbing for apples (although, that *could* be highly amusing), but more of creepy costumes, devilish drinks, spooky snacks, and a full range of ghoulish games. This is Halloween how it should be done and, as far as hen party themes go, you’d be ahead of the curve on this new hen trend.

Activity Ideas

• Ghost tours: Guided ghost tours are the perfect activity for a Halloween hen party. Graveyard walks or tours of local underground vaults are a fantastic way to spook everyone before you hit the town.
• Escape Rooms: Escape rooms often have themed rooms involving being stuck in jail, or running from something untoward, so pitting your brains against the clock to get out alive will always keep a Halloween hen party on its toes.
• Scary Movie Night: If you’re hiring a cottage or staying at home, we love the idea of getting dressed up in our best skeleton onesies and having a marathon scary movie-athon. This is always made better with some creepy cocktails and the option of hiding behind whoever is closest to you when the lights go out and the music starts.
• Campfire Tales: Everyone has a scary story to tell, or at least knows someone who’s had something unexplainable happen to them. Why not gather around the campfire (or on the floor around some candles) and frighten the life out of your friends? If you’re short on personal tales, hit up Reddit and check out the forums on unexplained stories. We promise you’ll be freaked out.

What to pack

If you choose to head off to Parts Unknown (or one of our top hen party destinations) for your shindig, you’ll need a few essentials with you to enable you to make the most of the Halloween hen party:

• Choice of costumes
• Decorations to brighten up your venue
• Cocktail-making equipment, shakers, plastic cups, spooky drink umbrellas, etc
• Games, Firestick/DVDs
• Make-up, fake blood and LOTS of black eyeliner

Decorations

Supermarkets push Halloween items earlier and earlier so, if you visit your local any time after the end of summer, you’ll notice everything you require is already stocked. There’s such a massive selection of black and orange plastic and paper decorations that it’s satisfyingly easy and budget-friendly to kit out your home, self-catering accommodation, or hotel room in Halloween swag.

If you’re looking for customisable décor for a Halloween hen party, you can order items from Etsy, Amazon, eBay, and many other suppliers across the UK and Ireland.

Food

You don’t have to be Nigella Lawson to produce something tasty for a Halloween hen party. In fact, you can mostly purchase pre-made spooky cupcakes, cookies, and sweet snacks at your local supermarket, if you’re short on time or skills.

If you do fancy whipping up something yourself, food colouring is your best friend, as if the ability to make creepy shapes out of icing. Lychees and eggs can make excellent eyeballs and sheets of pastry can easily be cut into ghostly shapes or rolled into snakes. We love using pumpkins to make hummus or cheesecakes.

Cocktails

If you can’t concoct something that looks vile for a Halloween hen party, then when can you? There are lots of ghoulish recipes online, but these are our favourites:

• Grasshoppers: A mix of créme de menthe, créme de cacao, and single cream and are a fabulously slimy green colour.
• Vampire’s Kiss: Made by mixing a boatload of champagne or prosecco, with raspberry liqueur and vodka.
• Spooky Punch: Take whatever you have on hand and brew your very own masterpiece. Chuck in your favourite spirits, wines, beers, or whatever and mix with tons of cherry juice to give it that blood-red colour. Garnish with some lychee slices to look like floating eyeballs. Delish!

Games

• Apple Bobbing: While the evening is young and there haven’t been too many cocktails downed, may we suggest bobbing for apples? All you need is a plastic sheet or a few bin bags to cover the floor, a plastic dishwashing basin, some water, something to protect your clothing/an old t-shirt, and lots of apples.
• Halloween hen party Heads Up: This game involves nothing more than a stack of post-it notes and some imagination. Split the group into pairs and take turns to write a Halloween-related word on a post-it before sticking it to your partner’s forehead. That person then must correctly guess the word from the clues provided to get the point.
• Apple chucking: This game requires a bit of outdoor or indoor space, a bucket, and some apples. The aim of the game is to see how many apples each player can get in the bucket in a set time.Â
• Pin the Spider on the Web: Exactly like pin the tail on the donkey, but with a spider’s web and a spider. You can easily create your own web with some paper or card and get a rubber spider anywhere that sells Halloween decorations. All you need after that is a blindfold and you’re good to go.
• Ouija Board: If you’re looking for a hardcore way to get your creep on, then there are a few more scary ways to do it than with a Ouija board. Order one online or make your own. Just don’t blame us when you unleash all the demons.

Halloween Hen Party Ultimate Playlist

Nothing gets a party started quite like the right soundtrack. For a Halloween hen party, it’s got to be in keeping with the theme and there’s no end to the tunes you can add to your playlist. We suggest:

• Thriller – Michael Jackson
• Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) – The Backstreet Boys
• AC/DC – Highway to Hell
• Lady Gaga – Monster
• Demi Lovato – Dancing with the Devil
• Trent Reznor – Halloween Theme 
• Ray Parker Jnr – Ghostbusters Theme
• K Dickson and M Stein – Theme from Stranger Things
• Stevie Wonder – Superstition
• Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me
• Selena Gomez ft Marshmello – Wolves
• Cliff Richard – Devil Woman
• Tenacious D – Tribute
• The Specials – Ghost Town
• The Eagles – Hotel California
• Rihanna – Disturbia
• Billie Eilish – Bury a Friend
• Bobby Pickett – Monster Mash
• The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil
• Taylor Swift – Haunted
• Phoebe Bridgers – Halloween
• The Eagles – Witchy Woman
• Talking Heads – Psycho Killer
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Risin’
• Shakira – Shewolf
• The Cranberries – Zombie
• Little Mix – Black Magic

Conclusion

Halloween hen parties are the ultimate way to combine your pre-wedding bash with the best night of the year. As an adult, you don’t get that much chance to dress up and scare the bejesus out of your mates as often as you’d probably like, so make the most of it and have a ball!