Bachelor Party Destinations

Take the bachelor party on the road with a weekend getaway.

While the other nearly 200 pages of this publication celebrate marriage and the various aspects of the ceremony that marks the beginning of life together, this page celebrates the last vestige of the single life.

The bachelor party (and its female bachelorette equivalent) is as much a part of the wedding tradition as the "I do's," though, if you're lucky, without nearly as much photo evidence. But not all bachelor parties involve nudity, police or vomit-at least not the ones we've chosen to write about in this family-friendly magazine. What most do celebrate, however, is friendship, and the way many of the grooms we spoke to opted to honor their friendships involved weekend getaways with the boys.

Chris White, who married Stephanie at Dock580 last June, made a bachelor-party jaunt to Nashville over Memorial Day weekend. They booked a house through Airbnb.com that was "great, with a huge backyard and deck," he says.

"We ate at some amazing restaurants like Husk, Merchants and Hattie B's Hot Chicken which, while delicious, was still not as good as Columbus' own Hot Chicken Takeover," White says.

The party also visited Pinewood Social, a gathering place with a swim-up bar, food truck, bocce ball and "tons of outdoor seating," he says. "It was a blast."

Stephen Harris, who wed Kristin last August at the Taylor Mansion, gathered his friends for a weekend touring Kentucky's Bourbon Trail. They visited four of the iconic bourbon distilleries located along the scenic drive between Louisville and Lexington, and enjoyed a bit of Louisville's bar and restaurant culture at night.

Brian Dick, who married Amber at the Columbus Museum of Art on June 6, 2015, traveled to Fairfax, Virginia to take in an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout. "We had nosebleed seats, but it was empty because it was a rare early card that was competing against some other major event [I forget what]. We could basically move up to awesome seats and saw a great show," he says.

Adam Cellar, who married Kelsey last June at the Athletic Club of Columbus, rented a cabin in the Hocking Hills with his bachelor-party friends, passing the time with some hiking and "cabrewing" on the Hocking River, followed by a cookout, a little NBA action on the TV, some cards, pool and hot-tubbing at night.

"Overall for me, it was a lot more fun than a night of stumbling around some crowded streets, and was more of something that everyone would remember as a unique time," Cellar says. "Getting that many of my friends together now that we're out of college it tough, so it was important to do something that we couldn't coordinate at just any time."

"We had so much fun, especially with the canoeing part, that the group decided that it would become a summer tradition."