Lucy Farfort Illustrator: Planning for a festival

This time last week I was waking up in a very, very hot tent in Suffolk for the start of Latitude festival. Hence the no post last Friday. The decision to go to Latitude was pretty last minute as we were unsure at first because the date was so close to the wedding - we knew if we went we'd be totally knacked. In the end we decided to go, mainly because the lure of Kraftwerk and a special 3D show was all too much. So we went and we were totally knacked! But it was still ace and look i've kept my 3D glasses as a momento:

So I did say there would be more posts about the wedding, although i will try not to bore you by going on about it too much. As that its all go on the festival front this seems like the prefect opportunity to give a little insight to our wedding planning.

Before we even started talking about planning the day we both knew that traditional weddings weren't our thing and wanted to do something unconventional. Within minutes we agreed that what we'd really love to do was to have a mini festival in tribute to our original meeting at Glastonbury in 2004.

The 1st thing we did was to choose a summer date which statistically had the least rain fall - the internet is a wonderful thing my friends! Then about 15 months before the booked date we set about looking at a venue...or more accurately a suitable field.
It became quickly became apparent that going down the festival in a field route wasn't going to fit our budget, seeing as the only response to our 'field hire' requests came back with a quote of £1000 for a small piece of land. This was before even looking at the cost to hire toilets, a water supply, caterers, a generator, PA, tent, bands....and the list goes on.

What we needed was an affordable venue with a good outdoor space so we could use the venue's power supply & facilities and also use their garden for our bands. To cut a long story short after months and months of searching & one or two set backs along the way we finally found a place. The hotel has a great garden with lots of different areas, so there is a lot of scope to play around. Its also liscensed for weddings and has a gorgeous Georgian ballroom - a perfect fit. Plus it was very affordable, with incredibly accommodating staff who were willing to let us hold a mini festival in their back garden!

Yay...now that we'd finally identified a venue and set the date, i could get onto the first fun job of creating the invites. Its sad to admint but i'd been looking forward to making the invites since getting engaged.

Firstly all festivals need a name...Wedstock was born!

It felt right that the invite should be fun & colourful, but i also wanted to use the idea of a ticket somewhere to make it feel like a bonafide festival.