Hen Party Games for a Group That Doesn't Know Each Other

The bride's school friends have taken one sofa. Her work friends are standing by the drinks. Her sister is talking to her future sister-in-law, mostly about where they parked. That's twelve people in four groups, and the one person they all know isn't due for another hour.

Then someone opens a pack of dare cards, and the first one says "do your best celebrity impression."

Most hen party games are written for a room full of old friends. Yours probably isn't one. This guide is about games for the group you actually have, built from the one thing everyone in it shares.

Why generic dares fall flat

A dare from a pack has three problems.

It's about nobody. The same card gets read out at every hen party in the country. Nothing in it has anything to do with the bride or the people who came for her.

It puts one person on the spot. A confident guest will enjoy that. A guest who arrived knowing only the bride will not, and she'll spend the rest of the game hoping her turn doesn't come.

It doesn't mix anyone. When the dare is over, everybody goes back to the sofa they started on.

The bride is what you have in common

Each group in the room knows a different version of her. The school friends remember the fringe and the terrible first boyfriend. The work friends know how she runs a meeting. Her family knows what she was like at six. Nobody has the whole picture.

A good hen party game gets them to swap. The friend from school hears what the bride is like at work, and the colleague finally learns where the nickname came from. By the end, the groups have something to talk to each other about, and the bride has heard an evening of stories about herself.

You can test any game with one question: does it give two guests who have never met a reason to talk to each other?

Collect the material two weeks before

These games need material, and collecting it is most of the work. Ask every guest for three things:

• One short story about the bride. Two or three sentences is plenty.
• One photo of the two of them. Older is better.
• One thing she always says.

A message like this does it:

Hi! For the hen party I'm collecting one short story about her, one photo of you two together, and one thing she always says. Could you send me yours by Friday? Keep it secret, and keep it something her gran could hear.

A few things make this go more smoothly:

• Message people one by one. In the group chat, the stories stop being a surprise, and the quieter guests don't answer.
• Give a date, and chase. Half the replies will come the night before whatever deadline you set.
• Keep a note of who sent what. You'll need it for the games.
• Ask her partner too. Send ten questions about the two of them and write down the answers, or ask for a short video.

Turn it into games

You don't need a pack. Three simple formats cover everything you collected.

Whose story is this? Read a story out without saying who sent it. The room guesses which guest it came from, and then that guest tells the full version. This is the best one to start with, because it introduces every guest by her best story about the bride instead of by her job.

When was this? Print the photos, or put them on a screen, and have teams sort them from oldest to newest. Mix the teams so each has someone from every group. The friend from school is the only one who can place the 2011 photo, so every team needs every kind of guest.

What did they say? Read out a question you asked her partner. The bride guesses the answer, and the guests bet on whether she'll get it right. It's an old one, and it still works because it's about the two of them.

Whichever you choose, keep each game short. Two or three are enough for an evening, and it's better to stop while people still want another round.

Keep it kind

The same closeness that makes these games work can make them sting. A few rules help:

• Use the gran test. If you wouldn't tell a story with the bride's mother listening, leave it out. At many hen parties her mother is in the room.
• Leave exes out, unless the bride tells those stories herself.
• Give one person a veto. Someone close to the bride should read everything before the party and remove anything she isn't sure about.
• Nobody has to perform. Guessing and voting count as taking part.
• Don't build a game on drinking. Someone is pregnant, someone is driving, and someone just doesn't drink.
• Ask before you post. Agree what goes online before the photos come out.

An example: Gallery Gamble

We make this game, so weigh what follows with that in mind. Gallery Gamble is a phone game that runs on the same idea, with material nobody has to collect: the photos already on everyone's phone.

Each player gets a random grid of photos from her own camera roll and secretly picks one. The photos then come up one at a time on everyone's screen, and you tap the person you think each one belongs to.

At a hen party, the photos do the same job as the collected stories. A muddy festival field comes up, and half the room guesses the friend from university. If it turns out to be the bride's aunt, she now has a story to tell.

A few things about it are useful for this kind of evening:

• It's quick to start. There's no account. One person hosts, and everyone else types in the code from her screen.
• It works in a cottage with no signal. The phones connect to each other directly. Wi-Fi has to be switched on, but there's no network to join.
• Nobody is stuck with a photo. If one in the grid is too embarrassing, you can re-roll it for a different one. Each guest can also let the game see only the photos she chooses. Our guide to keeping private photos out of camera roll games shows how.
• The photos stay in the room. They go to the phones in the game and nowhere else.

It has limits. It runs on iPhone and iPad only, and in a group of twelve someone probably has an Android phone. It needs at least 3 players, all in the same place. It's also about everyone's photos, not only the bride's, so it works better as a warm-up than as the main event.

The short version

Your guests have one thing in common, and she's the reason for the party. Collect a story and a photo from each of them, build two or three short games out of what you get, and have someone who loves her check all of it first.