Wedding Wednesdays: Bridal Party Upgrade

Aside from the usual wedding day primping--manis, pedis and an up-do or two--brides are taking their wedding weekends to the extreme with some new bridal party upgrades. Brides are now heading down a more unexpected route with really 'out-there' day of activities. And we are pretty intrigued by them! For example, Lindsay Schropp Brean of San Diego took her bridal party forest bathing at L’Auberge de Sedona Resort & Spa in Arizona before her big day. (Forest bathing, for the uninitiated, is a Japanese meditative practice known as shinrin-yoku, involving contemplative walks through the wilderness).

Have we got you interested? Here are some other exciting ideas. Those who prefer soaking up the night sky are opting for two-hour moonbathing parties. One place you can go for these is The Palms Turks & Caicos on Grace Bay Beach. Essentially, the hotel sets up an entire evening experience for the bridal party, complete with mini spa treatments and cocktails.

Many brides are looking to take the party outside. For example, Julia Geisler, owner of Park City Yoga Adventures in Utah, leads bridal parties on all sorts of outdoor recreational experiences, including stand-up paddleboard yoga inside a 10,000-year-old crater, aerial yoga at The Ranch at Blue Sky, and yoga hikes.

In Denver, The Art Hotel just started organizing urban art runs for brides and their bridesmaids, where they do a curated jog through the city to check out the city’s best public art pieces. In Jamaica, at Half Moon, A RockResort, brides and their girlfriends swim with horses in the morning before saying their “I do’s.” And at The Lodge at Glendorn in Bradford, Pennsylvania, the classic wedding day hair and makeup sessions are being preceded by a little fly-fishing, trapshooting, and snowmobile scavenger hunts.

For brides seeking a little Zen or adventure before putting on their wedding gowns, the options seem to be endless: like relaxing Himalayan salt cave meditation sessions in Santa Barbara (breathing in salt-saturated air is said to have many healing properties) to crafting Canang Saris with indigenous flowers (these are a traditional offering for well-wishes of love on the big day) in Bali. These wedding day activities with friends and family are not only about fun, but also about differentiating your “I do” moments from everyone else’s. And brides these days are willing to go all-out to make sure that happens. Get on board with these unique experiences and devour the details of your very own bridal party upgrade!