Looking Back: When the bride ran off with the stripogram!

But nothing ever stays the same does it? Even weddings don’t always tend to be traditional affairs with stag and hen parties possibly being totally unlike those we may have held or attended back in the day.

But with stag parties at least, dating back to Tudor times, they are going to have changed somewhat!

We probably remember pub crawls and ladies lunches. The most risqué part of the proceedings would have been the kissogram or stripogram. When the door opened and a policeman, nurse, French maid or singing telegram appeared, you knew exactly why they were there.

The entertainment could involve the placing of a frilly garter on the brides thigh, to be removed by the teeth of the ‘entertainer’ All good clean fun although I have heard of a bride to be who was so smitten by the kissogram that she was last seen getting into his car. The wedding was called off!

As time went on, the sexual revolution changed everything.

Airports were full of wedding parties involving fancy dress, decorated tee shirts and cowboy hats and brides identified by their sashes. The popular places were no longer a bar ‘up town’ but Magaluf in Majorca, Budapest in Hungary or San Antonio in Ibiza (where foam parties were the thing)

If you wanted to be seen as a bit more cultured, Prague in the Czech Republic was the place. Whatever the country though, it involved a lot of booze!

And it doesn’t necessarily involve just one event. It is usual these days to have at least three, so you can really celebrate your last days of freedom!

Today, there seems to be no holds barred.

A local company is advertising ‘Urban Axe Throwing’ for stag or hen parties.

Another especially targeting women, gives the chance to drink copious amounts of prosecco whilst drawing a ‘Butler in the Buff’ with nude male model, and a stag weekend in Dublin provides a pub crawl and then a private room to watch strippers.

It must make the actual wedding a bit of an anti-climax!!!