When I found a luxurious Airbnb in the British countryside with a huge pool, gorgeous garden and everyone getting their own room for just £300 per person, I thought I’d won the hen do lottery.

The bride, Amanda, was one of my closest friends and had recently been through a tough time so, as one of the bridesmaids, I was keen to make the few days away something to remember.

Her demands, at least initially, were simple. She wanted a nice, stress-free time away. No scandalous butlers in the buff, no nude drawing classes – and only minimal activities, to keep costs down for everyone.

We – myself and two of the bridesmaids, Lucy and Gemma – found the perfect solution in the form of a very aesthetic rental and, even with the costs of booze and a catered three-course meal, it worked out at just a few hundred pounds each for the 16 of us to stay for a few days.

To save on costs, we planned to do our own supermarket shops, cook fry-ups for breakfast and stock up on snacks so everyone could make their own lunches. We arranged a pizza night for one of the evenings – and all anyone else needed to do was to turn up.

But then, as everyone was set to make their first payment, Amanda began to change her mind. Far from the sweet and simple time away she had promised, she declared that she wanted a ‘champagne night’, and that the cheap booze we’d bought wouldn’t do.

She also wanted a ‘cute’ outfit, a ‘nicer’ brand of tequila than the one we had bought and a ‘special’ car to arrive at the hen do in.

As bridesmaids, Lucy, Gemma and I took the decision to cover the additional costs ourselves, figuring it was too late down the line to ask the rest of the hen party to make an additional payment.

It would just be an extra wedding present, I rationed with myself at the time, not knowing I was setting myself up on a dangerous, and expensive, path.

The added champagne costs were far more expensive than I could have imagined and, between us, we ending up forking out an extra thousand pounds for the pricey upgrade, bringing our total individual costs up to just under £700 each.

We then ended up putting another couple of hundred in each – partly thanks to having done our costings together when we’d all had a drink.

Infuriatingly, there were little troublesome payments I hadn’t even thought to consider. There was the full Airbnb cleaning cost, things such as loo rolls and bin bags, and all the extras needed to fill a huge house for a weekend away.

At the time, I didn’t notice my bill gradually increasing, especially as all my payments were spread out.

But little did I know, this would soon become the least of my worries.

Isobel, Amanda’s close friend from school and one of the other bridesmaids, had been dragging her heels about paying me back for months.

I didn’t know her well and, up until that point, we had been politely friendly, in the way you are when you’re only really talking to someone out of shared respect for your mutual friend.

It was then, as I was keenly awaiting the first payment, that she dropped her first bombshell.

After weeks of delays and excuses, she now told me she wasn’t going to pay at all, but was still planning to attend.

I simply couldn’t believe it. She told me, over email mind you, that she’d just started a new business and, with her husband being made redundant, could no longer afford to come.

This on its own, of course, was perfectly reasonable. But Isobel was adamant that she was still going to attend the hen do as Amanda would ‘miss her too much’, and that she wasn’t going to pay a penny.

She told us not to worry about it – she would bring her own food and supplies – insisting that she wouldn’t be impacting the cost of the trip.

There was nothing more I could do – Isobel had the address and was determined to turn up – and who was I to create unnecessary drama ahead of my close friend’s wedding?

We tried to deal with the situation tactfully and agreed Isobel could come, but pleaded with her not to let on to the others that she’d managed to attend free of charge – lest everyone else start demanding refunds too.

So Isobel attended and, to my surprise, we all had a wonderful time together. For the most part, she largely avoided us, and we her, but I wasn’t going to complain.

The atmosphere was a bit frosty throughout, and I could sense there was some growing tension as the hen do progressed.

Everything came to a head on the Saturday evening when Lucy caught Isobel helping herself to the champagne she’d promised to avoid after she’d outrageously sat down for the catered three-course meal, all without giving the rest of us the time of day.

Isobel’s promises that she would keep to herself and only eat her own food had clearly been false. Part of me began to wonder if she had planned this all along and had simply been plotting to scoop a free hen do for herself from the start.

Fuelled by champagne herself, Lucy couldn’t resist telling Isobel exactly what she thought.

It was completely unfair, she said, that we should have to pay extra because Isobel couldn’t be bothered to pay.

Other people had scrimped and saved for months to be able to afford to come and some of us were certainly in a far worse financial position than Isobel had been.

Notably, at this point, Amanda had gone upstairs and didn’t bear witness to this blazing row.

Furiously, Lucy reminded Isobel how upset Amanda would be if she knew the truth – thinking this, if anything, would finally bring her back to reality.

But her words fell on deaf ears and had little effect as, shockingly, Isobel didn’t seem to mind – even after hearing what the rest of us had been through.

She simply sailed through the rest of the hen do ignoring the rest of us, selfishly not caring that she created a very awkward atmosphere.

A few months later, in a move that shocked us all, Isobel didn’t even turn up for the wedding.

I can only assume her selfish actions finally caught up with her, and she was too embarrassed to show her face after all that had happened.

In a rather ironic twist of fate, Amanda didn’t seem to notice at all that her self-professed ‘best friend’ was absent from the wedding.

She’s always been popular and her wedding was suitably busy for her bubbly personality. She and her husband Ben are the type to have dinner parties most evenings and their wedding was typically packed with people, and Isobel’s absence went unnoticed.

She never mentioned anything about Isobel to us. It was almost a disappointment at this point as Gemma, Lucy and I had been wondering for months about what would happen when we finally saw her again at the wedding.

Even after the wedding, financially, my problems continued. When the second payment came around, four more people – Amanda’s friends, again whom I didn’t know well, didn’t transfer across the money.

They kept asking: ‘Can I pay you next payday? It’s a bit tight this month,’ but eventually their excuses faded into silence, and I was faced with another £600 of costs.

Initially, I tried to follow it up, and I was determined to get my money back. But soon I stopped hearing back from them at all and I felt embarrassed to keep on emailing them.

I convinced myself that, surely, they would eventually cough up the money. Who has the gall to simply not pay at all? Let alone for that to happen five times.

I thought, they’ll certainly pay me before the wedding. Then, when still no money entered my account, I reasoned they would bring it up when they actually saw me in person.

I didn’t know what to do. What could more could I do, short of going around, pretending to be some sort of bailiff?

As bridesmaids, we had been prepared to maybe double our initial £300 payment. You never know what sort of additional costs are going to crop up and, after all, the main thing is to make sure the bride has a good time.

But the costs kept creeping and creeping and creeping and, to my horror, I eventually realised I had spent just short of £2,000 on the whole extravaganza.

Even now, 18 months later, I wince when I catch a look at my credit card bill as I still haven’t paid it off in full.

I sometimes wonder if the other bridesmaids had made a pact among themselves to not pay me back, reasoning that the whole thing was taking place over email, and they would probably never see me again?

Personally, I do wonder if the time is coming for brides to pay something towards hen dos themselves. Even £300 is a lot of money now, especially with the cost of living and, if you decided to host a big birthday party, you would be expected to pay something towards the food and alcohol costs.

Why is it that hen dos continue to be held to a different standard? And often, it’s the bridesmaids who suffer as a result of it.

What’s worse is that Amanda herself is none the wiser to any of what happened – and I plan to keep it that way.

We’re still good friends, of course – I know that she would do the same for me – but I can’t help but question her being so close to someone so selfish and so shameless as Isobel.

In the future, however, I’ve decided I’ll only attend ‘day’ hen dos – going away for multiple days is far too expensive and, in my experience, much too risky.

• As told to Eleanor Dye.
• Names have been changed.