Ultimate guide: How to throw a festival-themed wedding

Festival weddings have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly during the summer season, with couples opting for more relaxed ceremonies and receptions packed with personality. If we look at the most popular wedding trends this year, you’ll see relaxed food and drink, interactive and immersive elements, and unconventional venues are hot right now. We’d say all those trends come to life when planning a festival-themed wedding, from food truck catering to live music and fun fair entertainment to wedding venues with woodland clearings or lush meadows.

The main takeaway with planning any kind of wedding is that it should feel like your big day. You deserve more than a cut-and-paste catalogue wedding, so chuck out the rule book and think about what brings you joy. If you like nostalgia and whimsy, incorporate fun touches like face painting stalls, ring toss, and other classic summer fete activities. If you’re more Glastonbury than Camp Bestival, opt for a bohemian-style wedding dress, explore farm and barn wedding venues, and dedicate more of your budget to the music. That’s the best thing about planning a festival wedding: you can do whatever you want.

Take Olly Murs, for example; when he got hitched, he chose to take over Osea Island and put on a full festival (AKA ‘Murs Fest’), complete with a ferris wheel, food trucks, and his friend Craig David DJ-ing as the headliner. Now, not all of us are fortunate enough to have an award-winning pal to call in, but you can absolutely put on the party of a lifetime.

What’s more, many of the best wedding venues for festival-themed weddings also offer glamping, camping, or accommodation, so you can turn your big moment into a multi-day affair. While you might already have a vision, there are a few things you’ll need to know to bring your festival wedding to life. Read on to discover everything you need to know about planning a festival-themed wedding.

Choose the perfect venue

Houghton Lodge (right), located just outside Stockbridge, offers a lovely rural setting; Osea Island (left), meanwhile, is perfect for coastal festival weddings

The venue is your starting point. If you’d prefer to get married at the same spot as your reception, you’ll need to scope out a ceremony space to suit. Many of our favourite woodland wedding venues are perfect for a festival-style ‘I do’, offering up large grassy spaces alongside intimate clearings where you can set up hay bales for seating and decorate the aisle with pretty wildflowers. Farm venues also fit the bill, many of which come with indoor barn areas, and so offer some respite if you’re getting married at the hottest time of day. We’d recommend you also look at some of the best country house wedding venues as well, seeing as many of them sit on acres of land just waiting to host a big outdoor celebration.

You’ll also need to confirm some of the more boring (but just as important) details:

• Is the venue licensed for civil ceremonies?
• Can the venue offer a power supply?
• What about toilets?
• Is there a limit on amplified music?
• Does the land slope significantly?

Festival celebrations involve a lot of preparation; so make sure to ask about set-up and take-down times too.

Send festival-style invites

Go for a more traditional style with ticket invites from Feel Good Invites, or opt for bold design with Wedfest

Whether you go for fun colours or a more traditional palette, integrating the festival theme with your invites is a sure way to get your guests excited from the get-go (expect a flurry of messages). If you’re going all out, you can even get your hands on wristbands and ‘VIP’ lanyards. If you’ve got ushers, you might want to add a little extra fun and give them special lanyards as work by festival security and staff.

As festival weddings are quite different, it's a good idea to include all relevant information with lots of additional details to help prepare your guests ahead of the date; covering everything from camping opportunities and facilities to dress code and sensible footwear on your festival site will make all the difference. Add a little checklist of what they might need to bring: sun cream, an extra layer for later in the evening, sunglasses, and anything else that might easily be forgotten. Check out our comprehensive wedding stationery checklist, or, if you're going paperless, we've got the rundown on all things digital invites.

Think about glamping

Venues like Houchins are really upping their glamping game; just check out these luxury tents or look at the Farmhouse, which sleeps up to 14 guests

Part of the appeal of a festival wedding is the option to turn it into an overnight camping situation. There are plenty of venues out there that offer glamping tents and yurts specifically for festival weddings. Others will be open to the idea of guests bringing their own tents to camp overnight (venues don’t need a license if it’s short term) - though beware, not all guests will be open to that idea. Whichever route you go down, make sure to share details well in advance so people can make arrangements or seek out accommodation elsewhere.

Go wild with decorations

We love these simple but effective white garlands at The Woodland at Wasing (left), just as much as the more traditional bunting seen at Enchanted Garden Events (right)

The first bit of advice here is to go for a relaxed and rustic vibe at the ceremony - that’s the joy of a festival wedding. Whether it’s a rug running down the aisle, hay bales for seating, or bunting suspended above, take full control of the look of the space. For both the ceremony and reception, along with the usual wildflowers, we’ve seen festival weddings with hanging multicoloured paper cranes, white hanging garlands, and more bold options like tall festival flags, painted oil drums, and fire pits. Hanging paper lanterns, festoon lighting, and signage offer up further opportunities.

Personalise your ceremony

Aside from decorating the area to suit, festival-themed ceremonies are a perfect opportunity to break with tradition, or, in some cases, revive them. For instance, the Medieval practice of handfasting is gaining popularity particularly among humanist weddings, with some getting family members to come up and take turns helping to wrap the cords or ribbon around your hands. This practice is where we get the term ‘tying the knot’, after all.

Ring warming, meanwhile, is where guests pass the wedding rings around before the ceremony, each offering a silent blessing as it makes the rounds. Writing your own vows or having live acoustic music are always popular options.

Book the lineup

Walking brass band at Osea Island, and full stage set up at The Woodland at Wasing

This is the best part. Organising your wedding festival lineup is one of the most exciting things on your to-do list. You don’t need to go and spend a fortune either, as wedding bands often offer multiple sets; you could request a more relaxed soundtrack for the first, progressing into a different genre later in the night. DJs too may be able to offer this, though tribute acts make for a great alternative. Just be clear with your wishes while you’re shopping around and let them know of any noise limits at the site. Naturally, a dependable power supply is essential, and DJ equipment and amplifiers should sit in shade to avoid overheating - if you want to go all out, think about hiring a stage and lighting rig for the day.

Serve casual food and drink

Keep food and drinks casual and pared back, like this cocktail van at The Green Cornwall and pizza from The Rubbing House's catering partner, Pizza On The Hill

Street food, wood-fired pizza, barbecue feasts, spit roasts, tacos, gourmet burgers? There are so many options when it comes to festival-style wedding catering. Aim for laid-back, get-it-when-you-want style service, and make sure you’re thinking about dietary adjustments - but other than that, there are absolutely no rules when it comes to sorting the food. All you need to do is ensure external caterers are allowed, and that they can safely access the venue.

It’s the same score with drinks and alcohol. Whether you’re going open or paid, get a mobile bar in, and if you’ve got a larger guest list, make that two or three to avoid lengthy queues. Or, for a more rustic edge, couples have been known to fill wheelbarrows with beer bottles, ice and water. Just talk to the bar team and venue about ice and water supplies as well, and make sure you provide more drinking water than you think you’ll need!

Consider the facilities

Not the most glamorous side, but you’ll need to make sure there are enough toilets to accommodate your group. This might mean accessing a building’s facilities on site, or hiring portaloos. As a general rule of thumb, aim for 1 toilet per 25 to 30 guests to avoid queues, and make sure hand wash or sanitiser stations are clearly marked - particularly if the water isn’t drinking quality. If not supplied by the venue, you’ll need to account for other amenities like electricity, water, and waste disposal as well.

Add entertainment

Music, naturally, will form the bulk of your entertainment provisions. But it’s worth looking into some extras as well, particularly if you have families and young children coming along. You might want to hire fete-style activities like a coconut shy, ring toss, or get everyone involved in an egg and spoon race, three-legged race, or sack race - all of which don’t cost much at all. Alternatively, go for more unusual wedding activities, like axe throwing or archery. Plus, whether you’ve got kids on the guest list or not, a face painting station is always a fun addition to the day.

Plan for colder evenings

Some venues, like the idyllic Pythouse Kitchen Garden, can organise small campfires for later in the evening

Even in summer, temperatures can drop quickly, particularly if you’re in an open field or up on a hill. In addition to asking guests to bring an extra layer for the evening, it’s worth getting some blankets in - perhaps stored in cute crates or boxes around the space - so they can keep warm and continue the festivities. Depending on the rules of your venue, you might be able to light fire pits or bonfires too (marshmallow toasting, anyone?) or even hire some electric heaters to set up around cosy seating spaces. You might also want to set up a tipi to host music, dancing or even a silent disco once the sun goes down.

Get the lighting right

You might want to go for a more subtle or warm effect with lighting, but if you're after a party, few do it better than Ark Buffalo

Stumbling around a field in the dark isn’t great, especially if you’ve had a couple of drinks. No need for floodlights, but make sure you’re thinking about visibility after sunset. Small garden spotlights lining pathways, festoon lighting, uplighters, and even fire torches easily solve this problem. For seating areas, think about setting out LED lanterns and battery-powered centrepieces.

Have a wet-weather backup

British weather is, by nature, quite unpredictable. So even if you’ve checked the forecast a million times and buried a sausage (as the old wives' tale recommends), your sunny day could turn gloomy. On the flip side, if you are lucky enough for blue skies and sunshine on the day, you’ll need to provide shade cover. If you have a tent for evening music, you can use that during the day. Others will hire stretch tents, tipis or yurts for shade, also using that space for drinking water stations, or additional seating. 

As this list proves, you've got a lot of options when planning a festival-style wedding, from the theme, decor and vibe, to entertainment, setting, food and drink. Now you've hopefully got more of an idea, go on and explore wedding venues near you and select the helpful filters on the left-hand side. Or, check out the UK's most unusual wedding venues, perfect for those in need of something a little different.