ChronicLogorrhea

Almost There … a bachelorette party for a Belle (no, not that one)

ATTENTION: ALL ADULTS WHO HAVE LONGED FOR THAT JUST-RIGHT DISNEY-INSPIRED BACH/ELOR/ETTE PARTY. Or any adult craving a fun and fancy Princess Tiana-inspired outing with your bomb ass friends. Look no further, for GG and I have planned it all for you! Links throughout for all of your party-planning needs 🙂

Disclaimer: We don’t own Disney; we are not affiliated with Disney; we are merely mortal millennials majorly obsessed with Disney. Upon our bachelorette’s decision that she would like a Princess Tiana-inspired affair, I scoured the Internet for inspiration, as I would for all of my other themed events. My right-hand planner, GG, resorted to Etsy and was hard pressed to find anything beyond corny tee shirts and overpriced replica tiaras. As usual, I discovered two issues:

  1. Any existing party was intended for pediatrics (don’t get me wrong – I saw some cute ideas, but everything was very kiddy and lackluster… it felt like a lot of filler content, printable cut-outs, and green-themed … things. Things, no substance. Nothing INSPIRED BY, all just rehashed portraits of Tiana or gaudy anthropomorphic animal nonsense.
  2. The bulk of the Tiana soirees were extremely limited in every way. It was starting to appear that Tiana was not the most popular princess, despite how crucial she is to the Disneyverse, to POC, and to all people who identify as female who do not require the notion of a prince to get by. There were adult party ideas for other princesses, sure; or parties to be held at Disney parks themselves.

THE PLANNING/DIY PROCESS

TO START, I can’t remember how we fell upon the idea for our Princess Tiana theme; but she is a favorite of CC, our bachelorette, an avid Disney adult. I initially took a poll of all potential party-goers to determine a setting for our festivus. The theme and New Orleans worked so perfectly together, but alas, that trip was a bit of a stretch. Since we are adaptive, we settled on Charleston, SC as a closer Southern town for our Princess Tiana bash. This was both a less time-consuming trip in terms of travel, and way more cost-effective. With the impending gloom and doom of Coronavirus and 6 ft apart humans always hanging overhead (well, hopefully not in the air, but…), we also figured Charleston would be somewhat less popping than NoLa. Thus, the destination was set! The party preparations would officially commence!

The deep-brain stimulation would also commence on my end. What kinds of activities and doo-dads would a group of Millennials be into? I knew some had to be cringe, some had to be cute, and some had to be breathtakingly hilarious. Thus, the Prince Kaveen Sticker Competition was born. I made a mock up of what was essentially an old face-in-hole design, but I placed the Groom’s face in the head of Prince Naveen from our tale. The end result was, well, breathtakingly hilarious. I printed ~100 stickers on MakeStickers.com in anticipation of a competition to slap these stickers all over our destination:

I went ahead and printed/laminated a giant version of this to be taped to our apartment wall, kind of like Pin the Tail On the Donkey, but make it Pin The Kiss or Beignet on the Kaveen. The kisses would be for CC, the beignets for the rest of us. I’m getting ahead of myself, but here’s how that turned out:

don’t ask about the secondary sticker…

Because Pinterest pins were sparse and the Internet was failing me, I figured I’d have to rewatch this movie and stew on some additional ideas. I knew at this point that I would have to ethically contribute to the Internet what it could not provide for me – a blog post with thorough details and DIY projects for any other lost Disney soul traipsing around the Google in search of Princess Tiana bachelorette party inspiration. I was not surprised by the lack of typically abundant princess-themed party supplies given the fact that Tiana is not your typical Disney princess, despite being the representation we needed to break the cycle of whitewashed Euro-trash damsels in distress. (Yes, I love Belle, but good grief, what kind of role model was she?! this could occupy an entire blog post on its own, so I will move on.) All products that we did not DIY will be linked at the end so you too can plan a Princess Tiana Bachelorette Blast.

Enter GG to save the day. Whilst brainstorming, GG surfaced as our resident genius, artiste, and dear friend all in one. She was able to design a couple of very crucial, very custom pieces for our Bachelorette Princess…

Froggy pins to comemmorate the event – one for each of us!
The sash – WIP 😉
Every princess needs her own tiara, but this one was inspired by Evangeline!

I quickly threw together a spreadsheet with our full itinerary and outfit recommendations – especially for a color scheme, which you will see in all of its beauty below.

FRIDAY

GG surprised the bachelorette at the airport following a change in travel plans. After a very dramatic quest for proper iced coffee beverages, I presented the squad with their party favor goodies!

Ring pops, Prince Kaveen stickers for our competition (more on that later), romantic color-coordinated heart-shaped sunglasses and airplane shots with a custom Dr Facilier pendant…
…and Frog Prince masks + green surgical masks! All of these were neatly placed inside of green paper bags.

The sticker wars began in our departing airport, with the Bachelorette placing one on unauthorized wall space.

The flight was quick, and we landed in Charleston International Airport! We took the best cab ride ever with someone who’s brother in New Jersey sends him his highly coveted beef bacon, which he warned us one is unable to find in the South. In fact, after finding out we hailed from NYC, he wanted us to know there would be a lot of differences but not to fret – Charleston had its charm!

Below you’ll find some of the highlights on our itinerary, sort of thematic, sort of not.

Miller’s All Day

One of the most talked about, incessantly Vlogged brunch spots on King St! Honestly, WORTH IT. Chances are, you’re not a day too old for an extra biscuit or strip of bacon. I won’t be posting all of our meals/foodie journeys, but rich meals were a huge part of this trip since Tiana wanted to open a restaurant.

The AirBnB

If you’re doing a Southern-themed party, you need to do it right and get yourself some porches!

We of course left some of OUR goodies alongside their goodies for us 🙂
This bad boy insisted on joining our party, preventing us from having coffees on the porch…

Haunted Pub Crawl

If you’re looking for friends on the ooooother side…. Charleston is considered both the holiest and one of the most haunted cities in the USA, which we learned over several drinks with our Pirate Lass tour guide. The only con to this experience might be that no drinks were actually included, but it DID allow everyone of various tolerances to pace themselves! We made friends on this cemetery adventure and CC was sure to give them some Prince Kaveen stickers. This was one of our first planned activities because we wanted to channel Dr. Facilier ASAP!! (Side bar – are you NOT dying to know his origin story? Disney, we wrote half of it and now we’re waiting to be hired.)

SATURDAY

Glazed + Callie’s Hot little Biscuit

Poogan’s Porch

I spent $20 on a stuffed Poogan, the mascot of the restaurant.

Rainbow Row!

Lest We Forget the Photoshoots

Angelica… Eliza… and Peggy!

The Gin Joint

While CC’s spirit of choice is not actually gin, we thought this bar had the CUTEST idea – provide the bartender with 2 words and find yourself imbibing a truly unique and magical concoction:

What would you choose? CC ordered two: unusual/boozy and sweet/floral. I ordered tart/fizzy.

The bar had a very speakeasy/20s feel, perfect for our Princess Tiana.

The Party Playlist

Just a note – I no longer have a Spotify subscription due to recent events, but this was what we jammed out to. We had a pre-game karaoke bonanza prior to going to the next stop…

Dueling Piano Bar @ JohnKing Grill!

This was some intense fun through 2am. As Northerners, we were unfamiliar with some of the university chants and songs regaling Southern lore, except for The Devil Went Down To Georgia. We were the only people wearing masks in the place, but it was worth the rich Southern experience… again, sticking to the theme! Sort of.

SUNDAY

What would a princess-themed party be without a viewing of our party’s namesake?! We watched Princess Tiana over some leftover biscuits and donuts before our cab pulled up to bring us to the airport once more.

What I Wore:

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