When my husband and I got engaged, I was immediately so excited to plan the wedding and he was immediately so excited to plan… his bachelor party ;/ We both agreed that we were a little too old for the traditional/raunchy bachelor or bachelorette parties and decided it would be so much fun to plan a joint trip with all of our friends. It turned out to be the best idea and one of the most fun trips we’ve ever taken. We were so lucky that so many people went out of their way to buy plane tickets and get hotel rooms to join us. I would HIGHLY suggest this kind of trip if you are recently engaged. I think a lot of bachelor/bachelorette parties can lead to fights and insecurity… this was the exact opposite. It felt like such a fun bonding experience between us as a couple and all of our friends/wedding party. We didn’t realize at the time that it would be the last trip we would take with friends for a long time, because I was pregnant with Bella one month after our wedding!

For our trip, we quickly agreed that New Orleans would be the most fun place to visit. We stayed at an awesome boutique hotel, Le Meridien New Orleans, which is within walking distance of Bourbon Street and all of the fun bars. We even had a rooftop pool! We all flew out together on the same flight on a Friday morning, which was really fun. We got to our hotel and checked in and then went straight to the French Quarter to get some beignets at Cafe du Monde. This is a must-do in New Orleans. These little powdered donuts are heavenly and they have the best coffee there too! We walked around Jackson Square which is so beautiful and saw the St. Louis Cathedral and all of the beautiful fountains. This was definitely a perfect way to start our trip.

After a quick brunch at Monty’s on the Square, which was highly recommended to us by our concierge and had amazing food, we of course went to Bourbon Street. It was cool to see this area during the day before seeing it crazy and crowded at night time because we got to explore some of the cool little voodoo shops and stop at some fun daiquiri bars. We also got to check out Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar, which is the oldest bar in New Orleans, built in 1722! It has no electricity and is lit with candles, even during the day. You can definitely feel the history there, it is by far one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to. After that, we wandered around and had a few frozen drinks and then we all went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Our first dinner in New Orleans had to be authentic Cajun food, of course, so we went to Mulate’s which is an amazing pick for a first night in New Orleans. The food was incredible and they also had live music which was really fun. After dinner, we headed back to Bourbon Street and spent most of the night at Pat O’Briens, which is the famous hurricane bar. We also stopped into a few bars along the street that had dancing and/or live music. We had so much fun all being together. It was a perfect night!

We woke up on Saturday morning and were able to take advantage of the rooftop pool for a few hours which was so much fun. After that, we split up to have our bachelor/bachelorette parties. The girls were supposed to do an afternoon riverboat cruise, but it started to downpour so we had to make a new plan and ended up in the lobby bar having fancy coffees while we came up with a plan B. We ended up braving the rain to get in some taxis and headed over to the riverboat area so we could at least see what we were missing! We ended up finding a really cute oyster bar on the river called Time Out (I think it may be closed now) and had a fun afternoon having some drinks and appetizers. After that, we went to check out the Spanish Plaza which is beautiful and then shopped at the Riverwalk Outlets. It turned out to be a fun girl’s day out!

When we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner, my friends had some really cute surprises for me. They decorated our room with a “Soon-to-be Mrs. Vega” sign and had a bachelorette sash for me and a pretty veil. I was so surprised and they made me feel so special. We all got dressed up in pretty dresses and headed to Mr. B’s Bistro for dinner. I had heard this was an awesome place to celebrate and that turned out to be very accurate. I was so surprised and excited when we got there and they had a huge table set up for us with festive balloons! We ate amazing food and then headed out for our ghost tour!

I really feel like we jam-packed all of the most exciting things you can do in New Orleans into this trip. We had such an awesome time on the ghost tour and learned a lot of cool things about the city. We also stopped at many bars and had too many drinks, but it was a bachelorette party after all! My friends had another surprise in store for me, a scavenger hunt! I honestly don’t remember a lot of this part except for laughing a lot, singing with a street performer, and asking random strangers if they would “walk me down the aisle.” We broke the rules at the end of the night and ended up meeting up with the guys on Bourbon Street before heading back to the hotel and going to bed.

On our last morning, we had planned to go to The Court of Two Sisters jazz brunch buffet, which I had heard was amazing and was really excited about… BUT we were a little overly ambitious about that and all ended up sleeping in and then having to pack up and check out so we missed our reservation. When I go back to New Orleans that is definitely on my list of things to do! We ended up going to Acme Oyster House for lunch instead, which is another must-do in New Orleans. The greasy food turned out to be exactly what we needed, so that worked out. After lunch, we had a little time before we needed to head to the airport, so we checked out Frenchmen Street and got to experience some really cool jazz bars before going home. It was the perfect end to our trip.

If you only get 72 hours in New Orleans, I think this is a perfect itinerary! I really feel like we got to check out all of the Must-See attractions in the city and also got to eat the best food and have some really unique experiences. New Orleans is such a special place with so much history and cool experiences to be had, I highly recommend checking it out!