When the writer of this blog took his first tentative steps in the Stag and Hen industry back in , an email from a bespoke-events outfit in the Baltics caught my attention, and went on to form the basis of this piece 14 years later.
A group on the way back from Go Karting or a Stag Dinner would be stopped on a back road by a group of extremely convincing actors wearing balaclavas and waving Kalashnikovs and baseball bats. That was even worse than its title sounded and which, I must stress, was never remotely considered by us at any point to sell to our clients.
It involved a Stag group hunting a naked woman played by a local guide in the woods with paintball guns. Yes, you read that right, and no, we never worked with the company offering these items, but the stunning strangeness of these events gave me an early hint that the downright bizarre is never too far from Stag planning, especially when it comes to locations outside of the UK. Since then, despite the events company in question ceasing to trade, the kernel of that Ambush Experience has grown into the modern-day Stag Kidnap and all its various, location-specific forms.
You can now get your groom-to-be falsely arrested and put into the back of a van before being lead blindfolded to what he believes will be police cells, but which turn out to be a room full of his mates sat stifling giggles as the hero is lead — sometimes sobbing for fear of the abusive treatment he has been promised by the fake police who arrested him — to the front of the room before the blindfold is removed, the music begins and a Stripper puts something rather more welcome than fists in his face.
Incredibly, the vast majority of Stags who have gone through this unique hell go on to applaud the prank, and revel in the relief of it as the joke is revealed.
