Bachelorette planning hub for maids of honor

The idea

Planning a bachelorette means one maid of honor coordinating eleven people across a group chat that scrolls too fast, a spreadsheet nobody opens, and a Venmo history she cross-references by hand. The pain peaks at money: multi-day trips run thousands in group spend, someone fronts the Airbnb, and chasing ten people for uneven shares — she’s skipping night one, the bride pays nothing — is genuinely miserable unpaid work with social stakes.

Partylio’s modest traction is the tell that generic party planning is too shallow a pain to pay for. The fix is picking the one event type with real money and real coordination stress. Generic tools model one host and one event; bachelorettes are multi-day, multi-payer trips where per-head splitting with automated payment chasing is the killer feature, not a nice-to-have. Guests never install anything — SMS magic links — because the product only has to win one user: the organizer.

Who pays

The maid of honor pays $29-49 once per trip, at a moment when she is stressed, socially on the hook, and already spending hundreds of her own money — a one-off purchase, not a subscription, priced as less than one decoration order. There’s no retention problem because there’s no retention model; the business is a funnel. Distribution is wedding-content native: Pinterest boards and TikTok bachelorette-planning content rank for evergreen high-intent searches, and every trip exposes ten guests who will each eventually be a MOH.

MVP scope

• Trip creation with SMS magic-link guest onboarding, no guest accounts
• Date/itinerary voting and RSVPs with automatic non-responder nudges
• Cost sheet with per-head splits, partial attendance, and bride-pays-nothing distribution
• Payment tracker with prefilled payment links and scheduled SMS reminders for unpaid guests
• Final itinerary page with a shared assignments list; Stripe one-off checkout for the MOH
• Skip for v1: in-app payment custody/escrow, vendor bookings, native apps, other event types (weddings, birthdays), group chat features

Build MOHQ, a bachelorette trip planning hub bought by the maid of honor. Stack: Next.js, Postgres, Stripe (one-off checkout for the organizer, payment links for guests), Twilio for SMS reminders.

Core flow: 1) MOH creates a trip: destination, date options, guest list with phone numbers. Guests get an SMS magic link — no account, no app install. 2) Phase one, decide: MOH posts date and itinerary options (dinner spots, activities, house links); guests vote and RSVP from their phones. Deadlines auto-nudge non-voters via Twilio. 3) Phase two, split: MOH builds the cost sheet — house, dinners, decorations, with a bride-pays-nothing toggle that distributes her costs across everyone — and the app computes per-head amounts, handling partial attendance (skip a night, your share recalculates). 4) Phase three, collect: each guest gets a payment link (Stripe or the MOH's Venmo handle with amount prefilled); the tracker shows paid/unpaid, and unpaid guests get escalating SMS reminders on a schedule the MOH sets once. 5) Trip view: final itinerary with times, addresses, dress codes, and a shared packing/assignments list.

Pages: trip dashboard (MOH), guest mobile web view, voting, cost sheet builder, payment tracker, itinerary.

Non-obvious details: the bride role must be excludable from costs and hideable from surprise itinerary items; SMS beats email 10-to-1 for guest response — spend the Twilio money.

Pricing: one-off per trip — $29 (up to 8 guests), $49 (unlimited guests, SMS reminders, itinerary page). Free to try until the first vote closes.