Forget the wedding speech, the tossing of the bouquet and the old, the borrowed and the blue – the best wedding tradition of them all is definitely stitching up the groom-to-be on stag parties. One possible way to ensure that the stag is suitably embarrassed by the end of it is to invest in stag do costumes to unveil and dress the stag in moments before you hit the town on your stag weekend. Don’t forget you can get 5% off any of our costumes just for liking our Facebook page…

We have a brand new assortment of these costumes for you to choose from, so let’s pick out the five best and see if we can’t find you something especially cringeworthy for him to wear.

5. The Baby

Remind the stag of his upcoming obligations in married life by decking him out as a baby complete with dummy and nappy. This one is especially cruel if you’ve headed north for a Manchester stag do, that northern wind won’t half take its toll. Best invest in a beer jacket at your earliest convenience.

4. Fat lady with tassels.

It’ll be open season the groom-to-be if you head to a club with him dressed in one of these suits. Men aren’t particularly fussy once they’ve had a few drinks and the sight of a full bodied scantily-clad temptress might earn a few gropes that will unsettle the stag a treat.

3. Spiderman

Ok, this one comes with a disclaimer. Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him the superpowers – your stag won’t be able to swing from building to building but he will draw more than a bit of attention as you take over the city centre of your chosen destination. Spidey’s a winner.

2. Blow Up Cowboy

A guaranteed head-turner, the blow up cowboy is a great costume to draw attention to your stag party – particularly from nearby hen party groups. Giddy up.

1. Inflatable Penis.

It’s probably a bit early on Monday morning to look at this, but never mind – you might stand accused of compensating for something but there’ll be no doubt who the biggest d*** is on your stag do. ‘orrible.

If you get a little disheartened by the fact that you’re now probably both heading to work and returning home in the dark, spare a thought for the good people of Latvia. The sun rises on average at 6am and sets at around 2pm in the Baltic nation, the trend continuing throughout the entire long, cold winter. So in order to help cheer everyone up a little bit, the Staro Riga (Shine Riga) Festival has been launched in the country’s capital.

Just about everything gets the ‘light treatment’, from sculptures, parks and alleyways through to Riga’s cathedral, the national library and the parliament building. Asked why the four-day extravaganza couldn’t be expanded to run throughout winter, Riga’s deputy mayor Andris Ameriks told journalists: “Well, we do have to pay the electricity bill.” Nothing like a generous councilman to brighten up your day, eh?!

The good news about it being dark all the time however is that it won’t feel wrong to be necking shots and dancing with strippers at 3 in the afternoon on a Riga stag do. Not that it should feel wrong to be necking shots and dancing with strippers, but there you go!

A similar trick was played out with lights (well, fire to be precise) in Brighton earlier this year as part of the city’s festival. The Jardin Flambeau, French for ‘flaming garden’, arrived in St. Anne’s Well Gardens with thousands of burning terracotta pots hanging from trees, rotating on daft contraptions and being juggled by rather daring individuals. The overall feeling was of warmth and intimacy, helped along by a rather heady flagon of strong cider!

Stag parties often make use of these festivals as a way of bonding with the local populous. After all, when everything is dark bar the artistic illuminations, people tend to lose their inhibitions and legendary bonds have been formed. One of our admin girls met her current boyfriend at the flaming garden event after randomly wandering up to him and starting a conversation about fire. True story! Best head over to Riga sharpish and find out what all the fuss is about then!

Last month we began a campaign to bring to your attention the plight of the good old British pub, many of which are closing each and every day. We wrote about our five favourite boozers in several different cities around the country which we think deserve some of your hard-earned in return for a delicious pint or two.

Taking into account our pan-European stag do offering, we thought we’d take the time to profile a few of our preferred continental battle cruisers for you. Hungary, and its capital city, has just had its credit rating downgraded, putting many businesses at risk of closure. So we thought it only right to encourage you firstly to explore the option of hitting up these pubs on your Budapest stag do.

The Caledonia

This welcoming Scottish pub serves up, unsurprisingly, bucketloads of Scottish food and drink. It is the place to go should you and the boys fancy a Budapest stag do Haggis, fish and chips or a pint of Scotch beer. Sup on a Belhaven Best, Dreher or good old fashioned Guinness Stout in a kind of whisky cellar-inspired environment. Very cosy stuff, and open ’till 1am to boot.

Belga Sorozo

If you fancy getting lost in a whirlwind of 80 different Belgian beers, some lethally strong, then this is the place for you. No visit would be complete without a glass of Kwak, accompanied by excellent food and a nice relaxed atmosphere. With beers costing around 1,000 Forints (£2.80) the prices are pretty reasonable too.

Paul’s Pub

You can’t have a stag do Budapest style without a swift half (litre) in Paul’s. An ice cream fridge sits in the middle of the room and a selection of Austrian, Bavarian, Hungarian and Czech beer is served. Open until 2am, this is the perfect place to spend a boozy evening into the early hours.

Kaltenberg Sorozo

A brewpub in a Bavarian cellar, brick-lined and boasting a room full of slot machines, this is one of Budapest’s most fun pubs. Two beers are brewed on the premises, Vilagos (light) and Barna (dark), with amazing cheap food served all day, every day. Out of the city centre it may be, this one is worth travelling a little further for.

Gerbeaud

A little more upmarket, Gerbeaud was one of those Budapest stag do ideas that struck us for the immense traditional Hungarian food on offer. They brew their own booze and serve up steaming bowls of ghoulash to locals in the know.

So there you have it folks. Budapest is truly a city of many facets and that’s just its pubs. Cheers!

A dwarf who acted in the Harry Potter series, as well as Star Wars has narrowly escaped jail after indecently exposing himself to a teenage girl on a train. It has also been revealed that Read had been hiring himself out for stag nights, typically being handcuffed to the best man for extra money. The 4ft 5 actor had drank a bottle of gin before beginning a journey from London to Leicester and allegedly performed an “indecent act” beneath a jugglers hat in the carriage of the train.

Wonder what that was, then…

The old mini-me stag night prank is one of our favourites, thought probably not the most politically correct option. It is hilarious, however, to see the stag handcuffed to someone in the same clothes – it’s best to take the stag into a pitch-black room to fit the handcuff the dwarf to him and ensure they’re wearing the same clothes.

Back to our poor old friend, Nicholas Read – oh Nick, what were you thinking?!

Nicholas, who featured in the Star Wars saga as a cute little Ewok has proved to be anything but with his recent antics. Read has previous when it comes to sexual crimes after in 2004 he was caught drunkenly climbing into bed with a stage manager and his girlfriend, proceeding to put the woman’s hand on his genitalia.

Passing sentence on this crime though, the judge, Mr Bond said:

‘A relatively short sentence of imprisonment will not help you, and it certainly will not protect the public from your fantasies.

‘I have had to ask myself this question: is this a case where not just you, but more importantly, the public would benefit from you receiving a short custodial sentence? The answer to that is no.’

‘One of the questions I ask myself is whether if I send him to prison for a short sentence he’ll be out in a flash.’

His female victim spoke from behind a screen,

‘He placed his hat on his crotch. I saw a movement and I didn’t know whether to believe it.

‘I looked in the reflection of the window and saw his hand moving under the hat. He tried to catch my attention, tilting his hat up, looking at his crotch area and then looking at me a few times.’

Read must perform community service, attend rehab and pay £500 towards costs. If anyone’s looking for bargain prank for stag weekends, give him a call.

You may have noticed it is very cold at the moment, freezing in fact, so what about you unfortunate souls that have to arrange stag weekends in the winter due to someone have a silly idea about a white wedding?

We say, don’t let the cold weather spoil your fun, but embrace the snow and use it to your advantage on your stag do.

Firstly, if you are going to be cold, why not get colder and head off for a stag weekend in Reykjavík – don’t worry the volacanos are no longer erupting in Iceland – and take part in a quad bike experience like no other. Just make sure you avoid those geysers.

If you can’t travel, but want to have snow under your feet there are many fake ski slopes for you to fall on your arse on, while for the trendy types why not try snow boarding on your Aberdeen stag weekend.

If snow and ice do not actually appeal, but you do have no choice over your weekend timing, we’ve heard alcohol is the best way to keep the warmth in. Do drink responsibly though!

If you are lucky enough to be heading away on a stag weekend during the World Cup then you’ve already got plenty of excuses to staying in a pub for most of the day.

However, to liven up your experience we’ve put together a stag do drinking game that you can use during the World Cup to help everyone on their way to merry-land, although of course we urge you all to drink responsibly.

Before the game starts write down the names of the starting players and put them in a hat, if you luckily have one to hand, then the lads draw the names out one by one. Obviously the number of names that you get depends on the number of lads in your group.

For each outfield player you have the following forfeits must be adhered too:

Goal scored = You must finish your drink
Assist = You must finish half of your drink
Red Card = Two shots (we’ll leave the choice up to you)
Yellow Card = One shot

For goalkeepers the above applies, but you must finish your drink for each goal conceded.

Now the following rules apply to all of you:

Corner kick = Mouthful
Shot on target = Mouthful
Penalty = Two mouthfuls

Finally, everytime a commentator mentions those damned vuvuzela you must have two mouthfuls.

As with most drinking games the rules will probably be forgotten after five minutes and you will all happily drink away regardless. If not, let’s hope for a 4-4 draw with 10 yellows, 4 reds and a few penalties to boot, while the stag should end up with a goalkeeper and a striker to put him in most risk of forfeits.

It has become quite normal for British stags to choose European destinations for their stag weekend. This has partly been as a result of cheap flights to the lesser known European cities and the subsequent increase in profile of what was known as the ‘Eastern Block’.

The appeal of having a stag weekend away is the guys get to enjoy a new experience and do and see things that they wouldn’t in England, for various reasons. Different and often cheaper beer is on offer, as is traditional food, while stag activities such as paintballing and gun shooting are far more authentic and extreme than they would be on these shores.

There are extreme stag activities on offer that you simply cannot enjoy in England, which gives European stag weekends the best chance of being a memorable experience for all involved. Here are just two of the best:

Mud Wrestling

If you are heading to Bratislava in Slovakia or Brno in the Czech Republic and you like semi-naked ladies and don’t mind mud then there is one activity that you have to include. It is fair to say that female mud wrestling is a slightly sleazy sport, but there is nothing wrong with a little bit of naughty fun on a stag weekend. These girls can get bored of wrestling with each other, so you can expect the stag will be pulled into the ring and shown a move or two in the mud.

Stripper Banquet

In almost all of the top Eastern European stag venues you can enjoy the most memorable meal of your life – and that is no exaggeration.

A stripper banquet is a joy for your senses, all of them, as you feast on fine food and beer until you are unable to eat anything else. Now you can sit back and let your food go down as you enjoy some outrageous entertainment, including some sexy stripping and then a lesbian show.

We think this is as close as it gets to living life like Henry VIII, but hopefully the stag will only need one wife!

Alcohol usually plays a central role in stag parties, but it can (just about) get a little bit boring to drink constantly without any imaginative games and challenges to break up the thirst quenching.

It will usually be the best man’s intention to get the stag inebriated, as it makes it easier to carry out the jokes planned at his expense. While there will be others, who will frustratingly remain sober without the gentle persuasion of a drinking game.

So on top of the obligatory stag party rules such as not drinking with your right hand and not referring to someone by name, what other stag do drinking games can you do?

We think the ‘I Never’ game is a great addition, especially if you are all seated in a pub and lacking in topics of conversation. The rules go like this:

Everyone sits around a table, with a plentiful supply of drink to hand. To start someone makes a statement beginning with “I never…”, which must be true. Everyone else must drink (more than a mere mouthful) if they have done what he hasn’t.

Before long the revelations will become increasingly shocking, especially as more booze is consumed and people forget that they’ve kept their dark secrets to themselves for good reason. Although, chances are nobody will remember a thing in the morning.

If nothing else, you will have a laugh and get well on your way to being merry.

For beer loving stags check out the Heineken Brewery on your Amsterdam Stag Weekend.

If your stag weekend isn’t raising a smile then something is quite seriously wrong. It is a celebration of a last weekend of freedom, not a mournful remembrance of the days of single life.

We are confident that any stag weekend organised by The Stag Company is going to be amusing at worse, but more than likely hilarious. However, to take this even further and deliver belly-aching laughter, that even the stag will enjoy, your weekend should include a trip to a comedy club.

For groups on a London stag weekend the availability of the biggest and best comedy clubs are on offer. The Capital is home to the venues showcasing the world’s best comedians that you know and also the ones that you don’t know, yet at least.

For the brave – or stupid – get yourself into the prominent seats near the stage and you are sure to become part of an act or two, especially given the likelihood of the stag wearing some suspect clothing, or at least an attention grabbing hat. Be warned, try too hard drawing attention to the man of the moment and the comedian may revel in the entertainment of turning the tables, so come armed with your best heckles, although rarely will you get the last laugh.

If not being part of the show, just settle for sitting back with a cool pint and enjoy a couple of hours of hilarious observations and impressions that’ll you’ll be desperate to remember for future use, but a few more pints later and you almost certainly will not.

Comedians rarely have universal appeal, so the advantage of comedy club nights are the variety of acts on offer is bound to guarantee that everyone will find someone funny – if not then there is always the bar for light relief.

Guys, there’s the smell of cut grass in the air and girls’ skirts are getting shorter. It can only mean that summer is just round the corner, and with summer comes many a great things. Longer nights for drinking, women wearing very little, and stag summer weekend activities. We know we keep you stags entertained all year round with our fantastic packages and jam packed full of fun weekends, but a bit of sunshine always seems to make things even better. Wherever you head to on your summer stag weekend location remember to take your sunnies and have a think about doing some of these amazing activities.

Paintballing

Getting out and about in the sunshine is what this is all about, though we’re not going to lie to you, if it’s too hot you’re going to be sweating to buggery but what the hell, you’re a soldier in this stag weekend war field no? With our indoor venues as well, paintballing is a favourite of our stags all year round but we know you guys prefer to be out in the British countryside when there’s less risk of freezing your arse off covered top to toe in mud.

Quad biking

You can take your long drives in the country and save it for when you’re romancing your girlfriend. As far as we’re concerned, there’s only one way to see the countryside, and it doesn’t involve stopping to look at anything pretty. It’s rough, ready and it’s off road. Quad biking on a stag weekend in the sunshine is all about tearing up the dirt, feeling the grunt and power of these super machines and letting rip.

Canoeing

Canoeing is an experience for real men… you’ve all seen Deliverance right? This is a perfect summer activity and when that sun is up you can be refreshed as you paddle downstream on the river on a stunning stag weekend. This is a fantastic experience for all levels so whether your mates are like bricks in the water or like ducks, they’re bound to have a good laugh on this experience.

Golf

Don’t fancy running round and tiring yourself out before a long night ahead? We don’t blame you, stag weekends are all about pace, you guys are in it for the long haul, so why not enjoy the warmer weather by taking a stroll on a magnificent green with your mates. Nothing but the fresh air, some banter and the faint whiff of bullsh*t from one another. We’ve handpicked our golfing venues up and down the country so you can have the perfect golfing experience on your stag weekend.

Surfing

Nothing says summer than running into the sea with your board under your arm like the cool kids used to do on Home and Away. Don’t pretend you never watched it and wanted to be just like a Brad, or a Rad, or a Chad… well maybe you didn’t but don’t let those numptys put you off checking out this brilliant activity perfect for the summer. It’s an intense work out that will leave you hyped and it’s a great way to spot sexy surfer chicks…