The Jaw-Dropping Cost of a Hamptons Girls’ Weekend

I sick and tired of dropping my hard-earned greenback partying with Millennials in some overpriced seaside shopping nightmare. Not to mention that I no longer identify as a girl and for some reason, am no longer welcome.

Pictured above is the author and the Spritzler Reporter team.

The Jaw-Dropping Cost of a Hamptons Girls’ Weekend

Between $97 lobster salads, $950 bottle service and $4,000 rental homes, an Instagram-worthy weekend out east has become a four-figure-per-person affair

By Rory Satran, WSJ

May 25, 2025 5:30 am ET

A perfect Hamptons girls’ weekend often includes partying at Surf Lodge, sometimes with $950 Casamigos bottle service.

Today’s picture-perfect girls’ trip to the Hamptons follows a strict itinerary: Wake up lightly hungover from last night’s debauchery. Swing by Carissa’s the Bakery for an $8 matcha latte and $7 almond croissant. Hit up the Tracy Anderson gym in Water Mill for a $75 workout class to “sweat out the toxins.” Stop by Duryea’s restaurant for a $97 lobster salad. Stroll through East Hampton Village to shop and take a selfie in front of the cottage-core Chanel store. Head to Wölffer Estate Vineyard for a $36 rosé tasting flight and a $35 “girl dinner” cheeseboard. Finish the night at Surf Lodge with $950 Casamigos bottle service.

It’s not really about the beach.

Between weekend home rentals and hotel rooms that go for five-figure nightly sums, a procession of pricey meals, drinks and Ubers and outfit changes for every stop, a content-worthy girls’ weekend can easily hit $5,000 per person. And that’s if you forgo ultra-luxury features like Blade helicopter transportation.

“The Hamptons is like Disneyland now,” said Haley Sacks, who bills herself as “the zillennial finance expert” and runs the Instagram account @MrsDowJones. “It’s so commodified, and you need to go to all these places to check a box so you can post on Instagram. And they all cost a lot of money.”

The small beach towns that make up the Hamptons have been an aspirational summer getaway since well before Carrie Bradshaw headed East with her cowboy hat on “Sex and the City” in the ’90s. But the influx of social-media content about the perfect weekend has turned these trips into algorithm-driven dupes of one another—and taken prices to eye-popping heights.

On TikTok and Instagram, women post videos and photo carousels uncanny in their repetition. The parades of hydrangea-studded scenes and rosé-drowned meals, narrated in a monotone, almost feel AI-generated. They often open with audio from the early-2000s show “Gossip Girl”: “Unlike the rest of us, sex, lies and scandal never take a vacation—instead they take the Long Island Expressway and head east, to the Hamptons.”

“The content aspect is really new,” said Sacks, continuing, “And has definitely changed the way that people make itineraries, because it’s so much about the pressure of keeping up with these expensive trends versus actually figuring out the places that are fun.”

Chanel Hamptons ephemeral boutique.

‘If you don’t take a selfie in front of the little Chanel boutique house-looking store, then I’m not sure if you even went to the Hamptons,’ one Hamptons weekender joked. Photo: Alamy

Typically, the most significant cost of a girls’ weekend is finding someplace to stay, for those that aren’t quietly landing at parents’ or friends’ houses (Sacks warns that many Hamptons weekends are more subsidized than they appear). With even the most humble Montauk motel spiking above $500 a night in high summer, groups often choose houses. With short-term rentals restricted, weekend spots are rare and pricey.

Anastasiia Neronova, 31, a co-owner of a digital marketing agency, said the three-bedroom house she rented for her bachelorette weekend in the Hamptons last summer cost $4,000 for three nights. She’s planning another trip for this Memorial Day, but is ambivalent about what she calls “the hot-girl summer, show your outfit kind of vibe.”

Noelle Conforti, a 26-year-old academic advisor and content creator, rented a three-bedroom house for four nights with some girlfriends last summer, which ran them $3,700. Splitting the costs is “madness every time,” said Conforti, who said her friend group usually put the house on one card and use Venmo to pay each other back. Sacks recommends Splitwise, an app that tallies expenses and does the math for users to settle up.

Noelle Conforti in the Hamptons.

‘People who go to the Hamptons post about it and romanticize it so much that it does give you a sense of FOMO if you don’t go,’ said Noelle Conforti. Photo: Noelle Conforti

Even just preparing for a trip can run into four figures, between new outfits and pre-weekend beauty appointments. Francia Cooper, 33, a New York wellness entrepreneur, called the prep “the exciting part of a trip.” Before a Hamptons girls’ weekend, she’ll buy new extensions for $60 to $180, get her hair washed for $120 and then have it braided for $350. She also pays $250 for an ultra-precise Russian manicure and pedicure, $120 for fake lashes and, if she has enough time, gets laser hair removal (a package of five costs $450).

In this former potato-farming area, even simple farmstands and food shops have become luxury shopping spots and social-media landmarks. Round Swamp Farm’s recent opening day drew droves of influencers (and the influenced) ready to purchase and photograph its $32 guacamole and $16 chicken salad. Perhaps no place is more primed to absorb the cars full of girlies than the newly reopened Sagaponack General Store, a Nancy Meyers dreamscape of fancy tortilla chips, branded merchandise and flowers.

Shopping, or at least the illusion of shopping, is often an activity. Chanel’s gray-shingled East Hampton boutique, built in 1897, is a popular photo spot. “If you don’t take a selfie in front of the little Chanel boutique house-looking store, then I’m not sure if you even went to the Hamptons,” Conforti joked.

Round Swamp Farm Market & Bake Shop exterior in Bridgehampton, NY.

Round Swamp Farm’s opening day drew droves of influencers ready to purchase and photograph its $32 guacamole and $16 chicken salad. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

Many young women speak about the pressure to plan at least one of these weekends per summer, budget be damned. “People who go to the Hamptons post about it and romanticize it so much that it does give you a sense of FOMO [fear of missing out] if you don’t go,” said Conforti.

Sacks warned of the danger of being overinfluenced to partake in expensive trips. “There’s a lot of pressure right now online of this idea of sameness, and the sameness pushes people into debt because it forces you to spend to keep up with a certain crowd.”

Some women spoke of tempering their trips this year because of looming recession indicators. Most see them as a necessary luxury.

“It feels like you’re a part of some exclusive club,” Conforti said. “You almost feel like you’ve made it in a sense because you’re there and you’re partying with really fun and cool people that you typically see on social media.”