Girls Night Out Ideas That Are Not Dinner And Drinks Again

You have had this exact night eleven times. Booking for eight at half past seven, long table down one wall, a room loud enough that everybody leans in. At ten past ten you are hugging in the car park doing the maths, and it is not good maths: four hours beside the friend you see every week, about nine words with the one you came for.

Everybody says it was so good. Everybody means it. And nothing about any of you is different in the morning.

Most girls night out lists sort by what you do. Cocktails here, bowling there, something with a neon sign. Wrong sort. The question worth asking is what the night does to the group: who talks to whom, who quietly gets left out, and whether you come home as one group or as three that have stopped pretending.

The night you have already had thirty times

Dinner and drinks is not a bad night. It is a night that does nothing, which is a different complaint and a harder one to say out loud.

Think about the last four times you all went out. If you cannot tell them apart, that is the problem, and it is not the restaurant's fault. A booking maintains a friendship group without ever moving it anywhere. Everyone turns up, everyone is pleased to see everyone, everyone says it was lovely, and six weeks later nobody could tell you a single thing that was said. You have spent an evening and a hundred dollars keeping the group exactly where it was.

Then the volume, which is the failure nobody names. A loud venue rewards one skill: talking over other people. Your two big personalities are magnificent in that room, as they should be. But the friend who takes a while to warm up cannot fight her way into a conversation, so she nods, laughs in the right places and gets home at half ten having been present all night without once being included. Those are different things, and only one is worth leaving the house for.

Neither problem is fixed by a better restaurant. Both are fixed by a different shape.

Four questions to judge any night by

Run any idea through these before you commit. They take ten seconds and they will kill half your shortlist, which is the point.

The pods form whether you approve or not

Past a certain size a group stops being one conversation and becomes several running in parallel. You will know the size for your lot, because you have watched it happen. What matters is that you cannot argue people back into a single conversation once it has split. Nobody has ever fixed it by raising their voice from the middle of the table.

What you can do is pick a format that keeps reshuffling the pods, so it is a different three women each time instead of the same three all night. Not togetherness. Rotation.

The two at the centre, and everyone orbiting

Most friendship groups are not a circle. They are two best friends with a solar system around them, invisible until you watch where people sit. The pair arrive together, sit together and leave together, and everyone else spends the night addressing them. Lovely for the two of them, lonely for the woman who only ever gets the group version of everybody. Pick a format that breaks up pairs by design and the outer ring gets more from three hours than from a year of good intentions.

When the group has quietly become something else

The other thing that happens is expansion. Partners came along one Christmas because it was easier, then someone's sister, then two work friends, and the thing you call a girls night is a mixed dinner for eighteen about house extensions. Lovely night. Not the same gathering, and it will not do the same job. If what you miss is the eight of you before anybody had a mortgage, book that, warmly and without apology. It is the trap a school mums night out falls into, and why a sisters trip works so well: a defined guest list is a feature, not rudeness.

Five ideas, and what each one does to the group

One measure only. Not the vibe, not the photos, what happens to the eight or twelve of you inside it.

1. A room where everyone is making the same thing

A painting session, a cook-along, a pottery night. Hands busy, everyone facing the same direction, conversation sideways instead of head on.

What it does to the group: it dissolves the seating chart. People get up, compare, wander, come back somewhere else. The quiet one has a task rather than a floor to hold, and by hour two she is usually the one talking most.

Where it falls down: it is not private. If two of you need a proper heart to heart, this is the wrong night, and you will end up having the real conversation in the car park anyway.

2. A private karaoke room

Your own room, your own playlist, no strangers watching and nobody queuing behind you.

What it does to the group: it hands the evening around in fast rotation, so the usual dominant two do not run the night. Great at eight, chaotic and better for it at twelve.

Where it falls down: there is a specific woman who will not sing, ever, and three hours as permanent audience is a long shift. If she is coming, put food somewhere first so she gets an hour as a participant.

3. Walking somewhere, then eating

A coastal track, a botanic garden, a headland loop, then a table at the end of it.

What it does to the group: walking is the best conversation rotator there is. Groups walk in twos and threes and the pairs swap over every ten minutes without anybody deciding to. An hour of that reshuffles ten people more thoroughly than an entire dinner.

Where it falls down: pace strands people. The slowest walker ends up at the back with whoever felt obliged, which is a worse feeling than not being invited. Keep it flat and short, and check with the friend who has a dodgy hip before you name a track.

4. Not a night out at all: a Saturday morning

A swim and coffee, a market wander, breakfast at eight while the world is still quiet.

What it does to the group: it changes who is at their best, because evenings are built around whoever still has energy at 9pm. A morning suits the shift worker, the one who is not drinking, the one who was going to leave early anyway. It also un-strands the one who always drives, who spends every night out on lemon, lime and bitters running the group taxi service and gets thanked for it about once a decade.

Where it falls down: it never quite feels like an occasion. Nobody dresses up, nobody tells the story of it afterwards, and a group that only does mornings loses the big nights that give it its mythology. Alternate.

5. Splitting the group on purpose

The one nobody suggests. If you are fourteen now, stop dragging fourteen to one venue and run a table of five instead, with the other nine booked in for next month.

What it does to the group: it gives you the depth a big night structurally cannot. Five people is one conversation and it goes somewhere. Two of those a season do more for the friendships than four large evenings.

Where it falls down: splits get noticed, and anybody left off an invitation knows it. It only works if the smaller nights are open and rotating, so it reads as a series rather than a table of the favourites. If the only time you are all in one room is December, the Christmas catch up for friends is its own puzzle and worth reading before you take it on.

Where Paint Juicy fits, and who it is wrong for

A Paint Juicy session is three hours, everything supplied, and the whole room paints the same artwork with a host running the night. Music the entire way through and a singalong in the middle while a layer dries.

On the four questions it scores on three. It mixes, because everyone is facing the same way with a brush and moving constantly. There is a job in it, so the quiet ones never have to perform. And it holds twelve as happily as five, because the format does the work instead of the loudest two.

Under 10 of you: book seats at a public session at $59 AUD a head across Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory, everyone paying their own way. Bottomless sessions are $99 AUD a head and are strictly 18+. From 10 up, a private booking is $700 AUD flat for the first 10 guests, then $65 AUD per additional guest, minimum 10 paid seats, and we come to you. Sessions run to a theme, with karaoke, tarot mini-readings or a photographer available as add-ons. The private paint and sip parties page has the run-through.

Who it is wrong for: anyone after a quiet, low-lit debrief with one or two people. This is a loud, hosted, three-hour thing, not a long quiet debrief about a hard year. It is also wrong if half of you want to arrive at nine and drift, because a session starts when it starts. Every artwork comes from our catalogue, with colours and details tweaked to suit the occasion at no extra charge, so a painting you dreamed up from scratch is not what this is.

Most events are 18+. Some are 12+ with a paying guardian present at all times, which matters if the group now includes somebody's teenager.

A good night versus a night that changes something

Almost any of this will be enjoyable. Your group is fun, that was never the issue. The bar is whether anything about the friendships is different on Monday, and you can tell by one thing: two women are now talking directly to each other instead of through you. They swapped a story too long for a loud table, found out they are dealing with the same ageing parent, and there is a thread between them that did not exist on Friday. A good format does not buy you a better evening, it buys more edges in the group.

So pick the shape that puts new people beside each other, give them something to look at other than each other's faces, and get out of the way. Same logic behind a decent mums night out, and the reason a book club night survives the months the book never got opened.

Girls night out FAQ

What can you do for a girls night out instead of dinner and drinks?

Anything with movement or a task in it. A paint and sip, a private karaoke room, a walk before food, a show with somewhere booked after. The test is whether people can change who they are standing next to. Dinner decides that once and never revisits it.

What is a good girls night out idea for a big group?

Above about eight people a group stops being one conversation, so choose something that keeps reshuffling it. A hosted activity, a private room or a walk all rotate people every few minutes. A long table locks a group of twelve into four separate conversations for the whole night.

How do you plan a girls night out where nobody gets left out?

Work out who the format sidelines before you book, not on the night. Karaoke sidelines the woman who will not sing. A long walk sidelines the slowest walker. A loud venue sidelines anyone who takes a while to warm up. Pick the option whose weak spot nobody in your group has.

What can you do on a girls night out if some of you are not drinking?

Choose a night where the activity is the point rather than the bar. A painting session, a show, a karaoke room or a Saturday morning all work the same whether you are drinking or not, which rescues the friend who always drives and usually spends the evening watching everyone else.

Can you book a paint and sip for a girls night out?

Yes. Under 10 people, book seats at a public session at $59 AUD a head and everyone pays their own way. From 10 up, a private booking is $700 AUD flat for the first 10 guests, then $65 AUD per additional guest, minimum 10 paid seats, and Paint Juicy comes to you. Sessions run 3 hours with everything supplied.

Book the shape, not the venue. Then spend the night talking to somebody you have not properly spoken to since the group was eight people and none of you owned a garden.

Trent & James