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Julie is the maid (ahem, uh, matron) of honour at a wedding next month. This weekend she attended a very thirty-something stagette. It featured a catered meal at one of the bridesmaid’s houses, and a wine-tasting hosted by a sommelier (that Wikipedia article is disappointingly free of sommelier photos). I imagine that everybody got a little tipsy, but there was no dressing the bride up in crazy outfits or undoing of random men’s flies with teeth.

Nor was there a stripper. I’m not a big fan of strippers. In fact, I’ve never been to a strip bar. Not because I’m a Puritan. I just think I’d feel very awkward.

Nonetheless, the sommelier and the lack of male strippers gave me an idea for a new niche in wedding services: the sommelier/stripper. Have a drink of wine, watch a tall drink of water. He cracks open some wine, and then you put money in his crack. You get the idea.

Maybe the stripper market and the sommelier market are distinct, but you never know. As Seth says, safe is risky, and risky is safe. In this case, risky is also risqué.

In Ireland and the UK, stagettes are known as ‘hen parties’. In Dublin, they were notorious for their extreme, uh, behaviour. To the point that certain pubs in the pub district had signs in the windows that read ‘No hen parties’. My only encounter with a hen party was when I was walking home through Trinity College one night. I got shanghai’d into racing two other unsuspecting men while each carrying a bridesmaid, piggy-back style. I can’t remember if I won. I was just glad not to stumble on the cobblestones.

Do you have any juicy stagette (or hen party, if you like) stories?