The Bachelorette Doc That Ends the 7 pm Panic Text
The bride is texting you at 7 pm - "what's the address again?" - and the answer is buried in a screenshot from three weeks ago. That is not a memory problem. That is a group chat trying to do a spreadsheet's job.
Here's the short answer: the bachelorette does not fall apart because you forgot something. It falls apart because the details live in five different threads, three phones, and a text-only DM from someone who is not on the trip. One shared doc, filled once before flights book, fixes it. Here are the seven details that shared doc should carry.
1. Reservations and confirmation numbers
Every dinner, activity, and hotel booking goes in with its full confirmation number, the name it was booked under, and the deposit already paid. Not the "we booked it, we're all good" kind of confirmed. The kind where someone with a lost phone at the hotel desk can still get checked in because you can read them the confirmation number over the phone.
This is the detail that saves you when a restaurant misplaces a booking or a driver goes to the wrong address. And it takes two minutes per line at booking time. You will never remember it three weeks later.
2. Every guest's phone and arrival time
One row per person: name, phone, arrival flight or drive time, hotel room, and departure. When one guest's flight is delayed at 11 pm on Friday, whoever is at the Airbnb needs to text her without hunting through the invite thread. When you need to know who is arriving before dinner and who is not, the answer is one column, not a poll.
3. Dietary and medication notes
Not "any allergies?" in the group chat two days before. A row for each guest with gluten, dairy, nut, shellfish, and vegetarian marked before you pick the restaurants. Also whether anyone is bringing an EpiPen, an inhaler, or a prescription that shouldn't be mixed with the champagne toast.
This is the detail nobody plans for and everybody needs. This is where most people get stuck: they assume the group will speak up. Half will. The other half will quietly eat around the menu, or push through a symptom they should have flagged. Ask once, on the doc, before booking.
4. Activity opt-ins, per person
Not a group vote. A column per activity, one row per guest, with a yes or no and a hard commit-by date. The wine tasting, the class, the boat, the club night - each one gets its own line. If four out of eight opt out of the $180 dinner, you book a smaller room. If everyone opts in, you push for the group rate.
Opt-in as the default means quiet guests don't get stuck paying for things they didn't want, and you don't get stuck fronting the difference. The bachelorette planning spreadsheet has this built in as a per-person activity matrix, which is the layout that stops the "wait I thought I only owed for the dinner" text on Sunday morning.
5. Who paid what, and who owes what
One running ledger. Who paid the Airbnb deposit. Who Venmo'd the group for the boat. Who is still owed money from the first night's tab. Names down the side, activities across the top, dollar figures in the middle.
Reconcile it on Sunday morning, once, in the doc. Not in three group texts spread over the next two weeks. Half the friendship-tension bachelorettes create comes from money staying vague. Making it explicit makes it boring, which is exactly what you want.
6. Backup addresses and Uber codes
The Airbnb address, the hotel address (in case anyone stays there instead), the address of every restaurant and activity, plus a fallback bar within walking distance of the Airbnb for the night nothing else works. Uber and Lyft promo codes for the destination city. The local emergency room address and phone.
You will not need most of it. You will need one of them at the exact moment nobody has service. Having them on one shared page - the kind guests can pull up in airplane mode from their saved screenshot - is the difference between the story being funny later and being ugly.
7. One emergency contact page
The last tab. For each guest: emergency contact name, relationship, phone. The bride's partner's phone. The parent or spouse who should be called if anything happens to the bride herself. Everyone hates writing this section. Nobody has ever regretted having it.
Why a doc, not the group chat
This is what actually works: the group chat is for excitement and last-minute logistics. The doc is for the ground truth. When they overlap - "Confirmed my flight!" in the chat, then updated in the doc - the doc wins on the day of.
Share it view-only with the guests. Give edit access to yourself and one backup planner. When a change happens, you update it once, in the doc, and stop retyping the same address into five threads at midnight. The best MOH weekends are the ones where the planner did less on the trip because the doc did more before it.
How to build it in one sitting
Pick a tool that lets guests open a link on a phone without an account - a Google Sheet works, a shared spreadsheet template works. Sit down once, before the date poll, and fill the reservations, phones, dietary tab, and activity columns. Send the link with the invite, not as a follow-up.
The bachelorette planning spreadsheet below is set up with all seven of these built in - the itinerary, budget, activities column, and who-pays split - so you don't build it from scratch. Copy it, fill it, share the link. That's the whole system.
Guests remember the trip. The MOH remembers whether it ran. One shared doc is how you make sure both parts land.
