Not to brag, but I have an amazing group of girlfriends. There are seven of us, we met in grad school, we all work in different facets of publishing, and we plan monthly dinners together in the spirit of a Galentine’s celebration. It’s pretty awesome.
Earlier this year, we decided to do something a bit bigger than book a reservation at a restaurant. We were going to plan a reading retreat! Books, a nice house, get out of Boston for a while, eat yummy food…what’s not to love?
Our first go at it was a great success, despite only five of us being able to make it. But now it’s time to plan the second one and all of us are attending. Yay! And I definitely learned some lessons about planning group events and will adjust accordingly for the next one.
Honestly, the retreat was a blast and Sarah thought the Bitchery would like some tips and tricks for perhaps planning their own reading retreat.
Let’s get into it!
Find a fearless leader
As the ancient proverb goes, “She who smelt it, dealt it.” By this I mean that whoever suggests a reading retreat might be the one unofficially appointed as the planner. Just keep that in mind! If you like planning, great! If not, I definitely suggest putting that bug in someone else’s ear and seeing if they’d mind taking over.
I’m lucky enough that my roommate is part of our Galentine’s group, so we share co-planning responsibilities. And while I love my friends, trying to nail down dates and get seven women on the same page is very much like herding cats. We plan via a Facebook group (we already had one set up to plan monthly dinners), but I highly suggest getting together in a group chat. I like Facebook because it’s slightly removed from my phone. I don’t have to worry about the nonstop vibrating if I were in a group text instead.
The necessities
All of us live in the Boston area and most of us do not have cars. Wherever we plan on going has to be reasonably accessible to the non-car-having people. For our previous retreat and our current one, we’ve picked places that are along our Amtrak line. We “get away” without having to do much traveling. However, New England is blessed to have a lot of states crammed in a small space and getting to Maine and New Hampshire takes an hour or less.
However, if you’re in say…Florida, you could drive six hours and still be in the same state, so consider distance and how far you want to remove yourself from your typical stomping ground.
Another thing to think about is what you have to have. Do you care about sharing beds? Or does everyone prefer their own sleeping space? How many bathrooms do you think would comfortably work with your group? Space is incredibly important because this is meant to be a relaxing mini-vacation. Some people might want to do their own thing, while you might have more social butterflies in your group. It’s crucial to have space that accommodates both.
Most importantly, if your retreat is reading focused like ours was, make sure there is some great lounging space! Are you a party of five but there’s only one love seat? Not gonna work. If friends are bringing their knitting or cross stitching, make sure there’s space for that too!
Budget for the off-season
We’re all a bit frugal in our group. Hey, we live in Boston and publishing isn’t exactly known for shelling out six figure incomes. We’ve found that going to places in the off-season has been rather cost effective. Last year, our AirBnb was in Saco, Maine. It’s a beach town, but we went in February. Normally, the home has a $600 per night rental during the summer, but it was around half that price for the winter.
Keep seasonal activities in mind, if you’re worried about having lower costs.
Tech is your friend!
Technology is a beautiful thing and made splitting the bills hassle free!
AirBnb has a function that allows you to split the cost of your booking. However, all of the parties involved in paying their share have to do so within 48 hours or the reservation is canceled. Dividing the cost and paying our shares quickly definitely helped reduce the initial sticker shock of renting a huge beach house for a weekend.
There are also several great mobile payment apps and websites for splitting additional costs. I personally use Venmo, but there’s the Cash app, too. If you’d prefer not to do things over your phone, there’s Splitwise. My roommate and I use it for paying utilities. Form a group on the site, add a bill, and it’ll do the math. It also lets you pay by Paypal, Venmo, or log a cash or check payment.
Get your grub on.
Because we took the train to Maine and caught a cab to the house, we couldn’t exactly bring any groceries. Thankfully, grocery delivery is a thing! We ordered pizza for the first night since people were arriving at different times, and had groceries delivered to the house for the rest of the time there.
Beforehand, we made a spreadsheet of food and drinks we wanted and we decided to let people assign themselves meals to cook. One friend was handling dinner Saturday night, I opted to do breakfast both mornings, we decided on cold cuts for lunch, etc.
A word of warning though: always get extra of everything. I put down a case of seltzer water for myself to drink. No one added any other beverages, so I just ordered what we had on the list. Needless to say, my case of seltzer barely lasted a day. You don’t want your retreat to be ruined by wondering which of your friends took the last damn seltzer.
And if you really want to get uber-organized about meal planning, Sarah has a whole course dedicated to that!
No policing!
This is the most important rule! The main reason we wanted to do this reading retreat is to get away from distractions, get cozy, and make a dent in our TBR piles. However, that’s not all we did.
Some of my friends wanted to take a walk to the beach (in the dang snow). Others liked getting up early and doing yoga in front of the big, sunny window. And if you’re me, well then you’re taking an impromptu nap on a giant bean bag.
I’m all about communal doing whatever the fuck you want. Though we shared a large space, we were all doing different things. We’d come together for meals or to watch America’s Sweethearts on Netflix, but there was no pressure for all of us to be doing the same thing.
That’s Reading Retreat 101! The hardest part is getting it off the ground and finding a date that works for everyone. This year, we plan to stay a little longer than a weekend because it was so much fun. And as nerdy as it sounds, I love having an excuse to trawl through AirBnb and look at gorgeous vacation homes.
How about you? Is this something you’d like to plan with your friends? Do you do something similar already? Let us know!
This sounds like such a DREAM and I wanna.
Oh, I am so envious. I had the greatest group of roommates when I was in graduate school, but we’re all over the globe now – Melbourne, Brussels, Toronto, Virginia – and one of us is busy helping run Canada. I don’t see any chance of getting us all in the same room again, and it’s rare that two of us manage to meet up. Maybe when we’re all old and eccentric?!
This sounds incredible! It’s like what I do by myself every weekend but instead in a clean house with better snacks and all my friends!
My husband and I do something similar to this once a year but with video/board games. We rent a beautiful log cabin in the woods and everyone chills. I second the NO POLICING rule! As someone who has no interest in games, but rather being around my friends and family while they ruthlessly tear each other up over games that 2 hours to set up, I appreciate that everyone wants to do what makes them relax during these events without judgement. If you’ve never done something like this, I highly recommend it. Also, if you can afford it (as the host) swag bags will make you the most memorable star hostess for YEARS!
yum – that french toast casserole looks awesome! Give me that and the bean bag. Perfect retreat.
Amanda, you are so lucky to have a circle of friends you can travel (and read) with!
My friend does something similar with her bridge club. They also have the “no policing” rule as shoppers will shop and readers will read. They all pile into one or two of those big rental vans and head to the beach after the rates go down. They have big dinners and bridge competitions in the evening.
Awesome job planning, Amanda – you thought of everything! Beautiful location, transportation, activities, food, bathroom, furniture, space, cost…
Regarding running out of your fizzy mineral water – I imagine everyone saw it on the spreadsheet and thought ‘that is what I will drink, and it is on here already, so I guess I don’t need to add it!’
What a great way to stay in touch with old friends. I am inspired!
What fun, Amanda! I hope you and your friends have a great time at this year’s retreat.
This is the dreamiest idea! I’ve gone on retreats with friends but this sounds even more relaxing than what we put together.
@Critterbee: That’s a great point! I didn’t think of that, though it definitely was a lesson learned in getting extra.
I’ve planned a couple of working writing retreats – shared meals, but nothing else structured – and they are fabulous. We did one at a retreat center owned by a church, and another at an actual abbey. We each had our own room, with shared bathrooms and kitchen space, for $25 to $65 per night. Those locations were in Albuquerque, but it might be worth looking for religious retreats in your area to be cost-effective. It’s also the only way we could get the number of rooms we wanted, as a rented house would be too small.
I discovered that people are *delighted* to pay an extra $25+ to have someone else organize it, so that covers my cost. We did potluck food, basically pulling out cheese and crackers, salads, and a couple pots of soups or chili, and each taking what we wanted.