The Bachelor Party Brainstorm -- Idea #1: New England Patriots Game

One of the more controversial aspects of wedding planning, in terms of the actual lead-up to the wedding itself, is probably the bachelor/bachelorette party.  As pop culture and Hollywood movies have shown us over the years, a bachelor or bachelorette party is not a success until the groom-to-be has nearly cheated on his bride-to-be with a stripper as a result of drinking more alcohol than he would even dare to consume on any other given day.  The setting, more often than not, is that desert oasis of Las Vegas, and sometimes the groomsmen just leave the groom-to-be somewhere and go off to have their own party (thanks for the nightmare, The Hangover).

This past weekend, my best man and one of my groomsmen (identities will be revealed in profile posts coming soon) visited Katelyn and me and the conversation turned to football, as it was the weekend and I pick the winners of NFL games in an ESPN.com group with my best man.  In an insant, I had a brainstorm about how my own bachelor party could avoid the clichés of every other bachelor party that has happened in history.  Yes, I know, I am denying my best man and two groomsmen the pleasure of surprising me with a bachelor party idea; but I am pretty sure that everyone will be on board with this one.

Click below to read about my first bachelor party idea: a New England Patriots game!

I never really got into the game of football growing up.  I played one season of FLY football in Lewiston, Maine and hated it, mostly because I wasn't in shape for the sport and my size meant that I was being used as a grunt lineman on both sides of the ball.  Everyone who knows football knows that the appeal of the game to the layperson is playing one of the skill positions, like quarterback or wide receiver.

It wasn't until the end of high school, when the New England Patriots made the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, that I started to have an interest in the game.  The Patriots had been such a bad team historically and the terrorist attacks of September 2001 were still fresh in mind; it seemed tailor-made for a team called the Patriots to win the championship.  When they did, it brought a championship to this region for the first time in recent memory.

When I went off to college, it was really easy to turn into a football nut.  Dorm life meant being around a lot of guys (our dorms were sectioned off by gender) who liked football, so most Sundays were spent watching football and finishing up whatever homework was left before the weekend was over.  These were the first years that I actually sat down and watched an entire season of football, and my friends and I would often go out on the commons and throw a football around.  Us Patriots fans were blessed with two more Super Bowl championships during the undergraduate years at the University of Maine.

However, for all of the fandom I have had for the NFL and the sport of football, I have never actually been to see a football game in person.  I've seen a number of MLB games, most notably Game 7 of the 2007 ALCS between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, which the Red Sox won to go onto their second World Series this decade.  I've also seen an NHL game, a first-round playoff match-up between the then-Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Phoenix Coyotes in Phoenix, Arizona.  I've been to the Patriots' home field, Gillette Stadium, but only for a concert headlined by Metallica.

Thus, if we're looking for something that I will always remember (as opposed to the typical bachelor party, which I would probably forget thanks to the hangover), watching a New England Patriots game at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts would be a perfect time.  We'd be able to drink (because almost nobody stays sober at an NFL game) and if a bachelor party must involve scantily-clad members of the opposite sex, there are the Patriots Cheerleaders on the sidelines.

(This picture seems a little out of place on a groom-to-be's blog, eh?)

Since neither my best man nor my groomsmen have been to see an NFL game either, and since we're all big fans of the Patriots, this just seems like a perfect plan.  When one considers that, if we're still all located in New England, we can drive to Gillette Stadium, we save on having to buy plane tickets and pay for hotels in a destination like Las Vegas.  Also, really good seats at Gillette Stadium cost under $200 a person, so we wouldn't be completely breaking the bank for the festivities.  And Gillette Stadium isn't located far from regional gambling establishments, so if we wanted to indulge that Bachelor Party Cliché we could do that as well.

All that said, the NFL won't be releasing the 2010 regular season schedule until sometime in spring 2010, and at that point we'll have to see what home games the Patriots have in September 2010 and the first week of October 2010 (since it makes sense to have the bachelor party closer to the wedding date instead of going to a game this season).  There are typically two home games in September, so we'd want to aim for one of those games and get tickets as early as possible so that the whole thing could proceed according to plan.

There's still a considerable amount of time for further brainstorming and other suggestions for this bachelor party, but for a first idea this one sounds pretty rocking.  I invite my visitors to this post to share your own stories of bachelor/bachelorette parties, and how everything played out for those occasions.