We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mallory Strange. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mallory below.

Mallory, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Like many new businesses, Bach Babes was a brainchild of the pandemic. In 2020, while working a full-time corporate job in Nashville, I began noticing all the bachelorette parties coming to celebrate their bride’s special weekend. Not only this, but also all the small details that go into planning a bride’s perfect bachelorette weekend, like the matching t-shirts, the beautiful balloon arches, and the goodie bags with everyone’s name on them. Every detail needed to be perfect, and it all fell on the Maid of Honor.

When a friend came to town to celebrate her sister’s bachelorette, she asked me to help her set up the decor, plan their itinerary (from a local’s point of view), and help them plan all the little details that the Maid of Honor typically has to prepare. While we were setting up, she told me she would have paid for a service for this, but after looking into it, there wasn’t anything similar out there to help stressed-out MOHs. Out of this came the realization that many Maid of Honors have trouble planning these over-the-top shindigs, needing to live up to the caliber they want to provide for their BFF, and the overall struggle of planning during their already busy daily life.

However great this idea was, I still had no business background and no idea how to run a successful business. I whipped out a sparkly new IG profile, made a website off my knowledge from random coding college courses, and made an LLC! I was.. terrified!

A month into it, I was posting every angle of that one party you could think of and received… 0 inquiries :’) Not one single person reached out. I felt so foolish for attempting to start a business, and was so embarrassed that I’d done it so publicly, now everyone would see that I failed at this. I was so close to deleting the Instagram and telling everyone to erase that embarrassing memory when I decided to do one more push and post that party to TikTok.

I posted the party, went to sleep, and woke up to over 300K views on that video. From that, people were heading to my website to submit inquiries for me to plan parties for them! I woke up to hundreds of inquiries of people wanting me to plan their party – I was SHOCKED.

My old set of embarrassment problems went out the window and a whole new set of problems arose, like HOW DO I RUN A BUSINESS?! And have a full-time corporate job? And do all of this by myself? And what is my pricing?? Problem solving at light speed became my new hobby and working 5-9 after my 9-5 was my new normal.

After 3 months, I made the decision to jump ship from my corporate job and go all in with this business I’d created. I started hiring a team, reaching out to other businesses in town to work together, and really got my groove in this whole business owner thing. I’m 5 years in now and still feel like I’m problem solving at lightspeed and trying to figure out how to steer the ship but we’re making it!

Mallory, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Mallory Strange Paulson, founder of Bach Babes – a bachelorette party planning company that helps brides and their create their dream bach weekend. We operate in Nashville, Austin, Charleston, and 30A Florida, offering everything from pre-arrival Airbnb decor setups to full itineraries, custom decor, and beyond.

I’ve always loved event planning, social media, and marketing. I’ve worked in various jobs doing corporate social media, corporate event planning, marketing agency, etc. Each of my jobs sculpted me to prepare me for where I am today – planning bachelorette parties and marketing everything via social media!

Something that sets us apart from other businesses is our attention to detail and our partnerships. Every party that we create is customized down to the bride’s new last name on the champagne labels. We curate each party to the groups liking including which theme they want, what colors they want, the bride’s name, etc. so the bride feels like the weekend is tailored exactly to HER! Our partnerships are another huge thing that sets us apart in the industry. Every group that books with us receives exclusive discounts with our partners to get free drinks while their out, custom menus at restaurants, discounts on activities, and so much more that makes their weekend feel elevated from the time they step off the plane. Some of our partners include the Virgin Hotel, Face Founderie, Kendra Scott, First Watch, and so many more!

Something that makes me so proud (brand wise) is that we are bringing to life so many women’s dream weekend. Lots of women dream about their wedding and the events that come along with it and it feels so awesome that they trust us with such a special occasion. Seeing all the posts of events we create and how happy these groups are, really makes it all worth it.

The mission of our business is to take the stress out of planning so our clients can focus on throwing the confetti. Our clients are generally celebrating a once-in-a-lifetime event and only get a few days of celebrating so making this event prefects our mission. Additionally, empowering the young women behind the curtain is equally important. Our team is learning the value of strong customer service, attention to detail, work ethic, how to be a team player, and so many other lifelong skills while working in a fun environment making dreams come true.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the hardest moments I’ve had as a business owner happened when I decided to expand Bach Babes to Austin. I had just moved there, leaving my Nashville team to run things on their own while I tried to get the new city off the ground. At the time, Nashville was booming, we were doing an insane number of parties and still operating out of a storage unit. I knew it would be a challenge to be away, but I believed in my team.

Then came the week…now known internally as the worst week in Bach Babes history. We had 30 parties in Nashville in 3 days, and everything that could go wrong… did. My phone was blowing up with calls from my team, crying, stressed, and feeling like they’d failed. I debated flying back and giving up on the expansion altogether. It felt like maybe we weren’t ready.

But instead, I thought: What if this is just growing pains? What if this chaos is exactly what we need to learn how to scale? So I flew to Nashville, signed a five-year lease on a new office space on Music Row, painted it pink, and called an all-hands meeting. We sat in our new space and talked through what went wrong and what we needed to do better.
It was a turning point. That office became our home base now referred to as our corporate office, and I finally saw that I didn’t need to shrink the business back down, I just needed to build better infrastructure. Now, we know our party capacity, we staff properly for busy weeks, and that breakdown week turned into one of our biggest breakthroughs.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

One of the most effective strategies for growing our clientele has been staying ahead of the trends. Whether that’s jumping on new decor ideas or paying attention to where the next hot bachelorette destination will be, and opening a location there before everyone else does. In an industry that’s always changing, you can’t get stagnant. We’ve also focused on expanding our services beyond just bachelorette parties to include birthdays, baby showers, and even business grand openings, so we have something for every budget and every kind of celebration. It’s all about evolving with our clients and what they’re excited about next.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bachbabes.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bach_babes/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bachbabesplanning