Virtual Stag and Doe

View quoted message What kind of prizes did you have and how did you make it that you actually made a bit of money from it?

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Hi Aoife!

Reading through the feed and wondering if you ended up having a wedding raffle and how you went about it?

thanks!

View quoted message We just did a regular Facebook event, I honestly didn’t know that was a rule. It was a “private” event, in that people had to be invited to the event to join and see it so I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not?

View quoted message I ended up not doing a stag and doe at all! With COVID it was just all to difficult to plan along side the wedding.

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I am considering doing the facebook event for my son for a jack n jill but thought we would break facebook "gambling" rules by showing prizes. You clearly had no problems. Did you just make a regular event page?

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Hi Tori, we are hoping to do a virtual stag and doe as well. I was wondering if you used a specific website or whether you did this all on Facebook. I have heard of people using Wix or Squarespace so I was just wondering if you did a website or if it wasn't necessary? Thanks!

I bought tickets for friend of mines daughter who had a virtual stag and doe. I think they did fairly well. They didn't need to worry about renting a hall or any of the other expenses. They had a Facebook live feed while they drew the prizes. So depending on how many contacts you, wedding party and family have its a great idea. They even sold tickets through etransfer so you can literally get people from far away to play too, though they may have to wait till wedding to get prizes.

View quoted message We made a Facebook event where we posted photos of all the prizes and the event details. We + our wedding party and parents “advertised” through word of mouth and social media.
For actual tickets we didn’t do hard copies of tickets, we thought about sending e-tickets with a ticket number and such but our guests didn’t seem to care that they never received an actual ticket. So we just kept a google spread sheet that we all had access to and added names as tickets for sold. For the draw part we went old school and I wrote out everyone’s names on pieces of paper that we pulled out of basket (it was more fun that way and gave us something to do on the video haha)

View quoted message That’s awesome! I’m so glad that worked out for you! If you don’t mind me asking, how did you sell tickets and how were people informed what the prizes were?

We did this after canceling our inperson event back in April. We called it our wedding raffle and sold tickets, if people had bought a ticket to our original event it transferred over to 1 ticket and then we sold more at $10 each or 3/$25.
We did a raffle with a bunch of prizes. Some donated through local places, some from the wedding party, and some we purchased ourselves. We made sure to have 3 big prizes- a cooler of booze, a TV, and a lottery ticket tree then some smaller basket prizes.

Each ticket meant you were in the draw for all the prizes to make it easier for us to keep track. We drew the bigger prizes first so everyone had a shot, then moved on to the smaller ones!
We did the actual draw over in a Facebook room so people could jump on and watch/ chat with us for a bit so it still felt like an “event” - a lot of people really appreciated that part of it.
We got a great response! Honestly made more money than others we know did having an in-person event and it was way less work. People generally want to support you in whatever way they can. Also meant that people who wouldn’t have been able to come to the in-person event anyways were able to “attend”.

I agree that taking the social aspect out of it (games, drinks) defeats the purpose of a stag and doe. You likely won't get a lot of response if you are simply asking people for money to pay for your wedding through some giveaways. It may be worthwhile if you can get donations and then host a silent auction on a facebook group, for those who would like to help you out.

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In that case, I think it ultimately depends on your audience. You obviously won't make as much money but you also have less costs to consider. And without the social aspects, it's not really and stag and doe anymore but rather just a raffle.

I know you say it's not a live stream but I would recommend live streaming the raffle announcement if you're expecting buy-in from non-friends and non-family. Personally, I never trust any raffle is that held behind closed doors and I've experienced a few where they were rigged to benefit those the event organizer is close with.

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It wouldn't be a live stream but more of an e-storefront for people to buy raffle tickets and what not.

Are you treating it as a co-ed bachelor/ette party or are you specifically looking to fund raise? If you're looking at it as a safe method to have a party with close ones, it could potentially work. But I can't imagine many people will see the appeal in paying for a live stream of what is essentially a glorified GoFundMe, especially once the social aspects that make these events tolerable (drinking, live games) are taken out.