Hen do abroad: sort the phones, plugs and photos before you fly.

Most of the planning is about the bride. Ask her, or someone who knows her well, what she would love, what she would rather skip and who she wants there. Then work through the practical steps with the group:

• agree dates and a budget early, so everyone can book leave and save, and keep the budget to what the whole group can afford;
• decide who collects the money, and set one date for deposits and one for the balance;
• choose the destination and book travel and accommodation, or a package if that suits the group;
• ask every hen to check that her passport or ID is valid for the trip;
• plan one or two booked activities and leave some free time, rather than filling every hour;
• share one plan with times, addresses and booking references, and keep it somewhere everyone can open offline;
• sort the phone side, which the rest of this guide covers: roaming, plugs and where the photos will go.

This guide doesn’t compare destinations or packages.

A group with Irish and UK hens can end up with two very different roaming bills for the same weekend. An Irish plan, like any plan from an EU country, normally works at domestic prices across the EU under the roam-like-at-home rules, which also cover Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Operators may apply a fair-use limit to data at the domestic price. A UK plan is not covered by those rules, so UK hens should check their own operator’s roaming charges before they fly (some UK plans include EU roaming). The Your Europe page on mobile roaming explains the rules.

• Ask every hen to check her roaming before the trip, not at the arrivals gate.
• Get the Wi-Fi name and password for the villa or hotel, and post it in the group chat when you arrive.
• Suggest that hens on an expensive plan add photos on Wi-Fi, or once they are home.

Our guide for destination wedding guests covers connection at the venue in more detail.

Irish and UK hens use the same three-pin plug at home, so one adapter type covers the whole group. UK and Irish plugs don’t fit the two-round-pin sockets used across most of mainland Europe, so you need an adapter for most continental destinations. Malta and Cyprus use the same three-pin socket as Ireland and the UK.

• Pack one adapter per person, plus a spare for the room.
• Check the listing for your villa or hotel, or ask the owner or front desk, before you rely on its sockets.

On a hen do, every phone takes photos and most of them stay where they were taken. Some end up in the group chat, between the plans, the voice notes and the memes, and some go straight to Instagram before the bride has seen them.

A shared album gives the weekend one place for photos. The host sets it up, shares a link or QR code, and each hen adds photos from her phone’s browser. The photos stay together in the album rather than buried in the chat.

Guests open the album in their browser without installing an app or creating an account. By default, people with the shared link or QR code can view its photos while the album is active. A link can be forwarded, and recipients can save copies.

So treat the link like the villa’s door code: share it with the group, and don’t post it publicly. When you create the album, you can add an optional password. Hens then need the password as well as the link.

The host is whoever creates the album, often the chief bridesmaid or the trip organiser. The host signs in by email to manage the album and can delete any photo from it.

Some photos from a hen do belong on Instagram, and some belong only in the album. Agree which is which with the bride before the trip, not after the first post.

• Ask the bride what she is happy to see posted publicly, and when. Some brides would rather nothing goes up until they have seen the photos.
• Ask hens to add photos to the album first, and to post publicly only what the bride and anyone else in the photo are happy with.
• If the bride or anyone else asks for a photo to come out of the album, the host can delete it. Copies people have already saved or posted are not affected, so the ask-first habit matters more than the delete button.

For more on posting photos of other people, see our guide to guest photos and GDPR. For photo manners at the wedding itself, see destination wedding etiquette.

Plenty of the best photos are still sitting in camera rolls on Monday morning, waiting for someone to scroll back through the weekend. Plan the album around that.

Your Free album holds up to 100 photos in total and stays available for 14 days from its first successful upload. No payment card needed. Videos are not included.

The hosting period starts with the first successful upload, which is usually on the first evening. By the time everyone flies home, the countdown is already running. FotoDrop doesn’t send reminders to the hens, so send one message yourself, in the group chat, with the album link and a date to add photos by. Leave yourself time to download everything before the album expires.

The photo limit is shared by the whole album, and a group of hens taking photos all weekend can fill a Free album. Check the remaining space before you send your reminder. If you need more room or time, you can upgrade the album. Mini costs €9 one-time for 500 photos, 10 videos and 30 days. Full costs €19 one-time for 90 days, with 25 GB of storage included and no fixed photo or video count within it. If you upgrade before anyone uploads, the paid period also starts with the first upload. If you upgrade after uploads have begun, it runs from the day you buy it. You can also buy a hosting extension of 7, 30 or 90 days from album management. See pricing and how it works for the details.

A short checklist to share with the group a week or two before you fly:

• everyone has paid their deposit and knows when the balance is due;
• every hen’s passport or ID is valid for the trip;
• every hen has checked her roaming charges;
• the booking references and the plan are saved somewhere you can open offline;
• one plug adapter per person, plus a spare;
• the shared album is created, and the link is in the group chat;
• the bride has said what she is happy to see posted, and the group knows;
• you have agreed a date to add photos by after the trip.

Album details and uploaded photos on FotoDrop.eu use Cloudflare storage restricted to the EU. Email delivery, network handling, support, logs, caches, visit measurement and backups have their own processing arrangements and may involve locations outside the EU. The privacy policy covers who processes what and where.

While the album is still active, download the photos, then open the saved files and check that everything is there before you tell the group the album is done. Send the bride her copy, or share the link with her before the album expires.

Photos are normally optimised to at most 4,000 pixels on the longest edge. Keep the camera originals separately if you need untouched files, larger prints or room for substantial cropping.

If the bride wants a shot printed or framed, ask the hen who took it for her camera original.