How Do You Prepare For a Music Festival?
When I was considering the purchase of some tickets to an upcoming music festival in a nearby city, I wanted to educate myself on everything that I needed to know beforehand. So, I did some research to find out the process that goes into preparing for a music festival.
How do you prepare for a music festival? In order to begin preparing for a music festival, you will need to plan out all of your travel and sleeping arrangements. Next, you will need to get your packing list together and make all of the proper preparations up until your day of travel.
When you are going to a music festival, as opposed to a regular vacation or outing, you will need to bring a few extra items in order to have the best possible experience. With all of these factors in mind, you should be able to flawlessly plan, prepare for, and execute your music festival trip.
Music festivals are a popular trend that has been sweeping the nation for the past several years. There are so many different genres of music that hold big festivals with thousands of people in attendance.
Whether you are a regular festival-goer or a complete beginner on the scene, you will need to make sure that you are effectively preparing for your upcoming adventure. Keep reading to find out how you can get ready for your next music festival
How To Prepare For a Music Festival
If you are going to a music festival for the first time, it can seem like a very daunting task. With so many people attending music festivals yearly and becoming regulars, you might feel as if everyone else is a pro and you have no idea what you are doing.
Or, on the other hand, you might have attended a few festivals but you maybe wished that you were a little bit more prepared.
While it is true that music festivals are activities that people participate in for fun, this does not mean that there is not a lot of preparation that is required for a successful trip.
When you are at a music festival, you must be prepared to be standing outside in the sun for several hours of the day. On top of standing, you will most likely be dancing when your favorite songs come on, and walking or running through the grounds to get to all of the different stages.
With all of that being said, you will need to make sure that you are monitoring your health and that you have everything you need for your convenience when you are pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, because those are the only places that music festivals can really take place.
To begin this discussion of how to prepare for a music festival, we will be going over some quick steps that you should go through while you are planning to go to the music festival. This is where you will start in all of your preparations.
Take a look at the list down below to get a general guideline of what you should be doing from the time that you decide to attend the festival in question.
These are the steps that you should take in order to prepare for a music festival:
- Plan out how you will be getting there
- Decide on your sleeping arrangements
- Create and plan your outfits
- Come up with a packing list for your trip
- Get all of your belongings together in preparation for your departure
First and foremost, you will need to plan our how you will be getting there. Are you going out of state to attend the festival, or even out of the country? Is it close enough to drive?
You obviously will need to make the arrangements of your travel before you can do anything else, but the next most important thing is where you will be sleeping when you get there.
Most music festivals will last for a weekend or several days in a row, meaning that you will need to find somewhere to crash every night until you go back home. Even if you are only attending for one day, the chances are if you need to travel there, then you will need to stay there for at least one night as well.
You can go with the traditional hotel room that is nearby the festival grounds, or you can look for some budget options like motels or well-reviewed hostels in the area. You can also try to find some free accommodations through couch surfing websites, or you can stay with a friend or family member that lives in the city.
It is also an option to go festival camping, which is almost exactly what it sounds like. With the reservation of a small campsite, you can put up a tent and stay on the same grounds that your favorite artists walk across and perform on.
All in all, your travel and sleeping arrangement choices will really depend on your individual needs and what you have to spend. Keep your budget in mind during this process, and make sure that you are finding solutions to match it.
Next, you will need to create and plan your outfits. As we all know, the outfits that you wear to a music festival are probably the most important components. Music fans spend lots of time and money putting together creative ensembles, and it is almost a staple in the culture.
Along with the outfits that you will be wearing during the festival days, you need an essential packing list that includes all of the necessary items. There will be more details on this later in the article, but it is definitely something that should be kept in mind while you are making arrangements.
Finally, you will need to get all of your belongings together in preparation for your departure. This step will include finding a way to pack lightly if you are going on a plane, and coordinating your baggage allowance.
In addition to getting all of your travel and sleeping arrangements together before you depart, you will also need to know how to prepare yourself for the first day of the music festival, and the day after that, and the next day after that.
To tie up this section, we will be going over how you can get yourself ready for a full day of fun, no matter how many days you are staying at the festival. The list down below will outline some of the main points, with more details to follow.
How To Prepare For The Day Of The Music Festival:
- Stay hydrated
- Eat a healthy breakfast in the morning
- Make sure you have all of your essentials
- Pack everything in to a convenient shoulder or belt bag
When you are preparing for the day of the music festival, the most important thing to keep in mind is your hydration. As we all know, music festivals require standing outside in the heat all day and moving around.
So, you should be drinking a lot of water in the days leading up to the first day, and continue to drink tons more while you are participating in these activities.
Along with drinking lots of water, you should eat a healthy breakfast in the morning. This should be something that gives you energy and keeps you full and ready to go for the day.
You shouldn’t eat so much that you won’t be able to move around freely, but it is important that you are not hungry when you get out onto the festival grounds.
Additionally, make sure that you have all of your essentials with you. This includes everything that you will need during the day, and whatever you are using to carry your belongings around.
To help with this, you can put everything into a convenient shoulder or belt bag. For music festivals in particular, belt bags or fanny packs are usually the way to go, because you can keep track of everything that you have with you more easily.
However, you can go for the classic backpack or possibly split your things between the two. Either way, it is best to have something sturdy and secure to hold all of your stuff, instead of trying to hold it in your hands, because we all know how that would go.
How To Prepare For Music Festival Camping
When you are attending almost any major music festival, it is usually an option to reserve a campsite and pitch a tent right on the festival grounds.
For the die hard music fans, this is a great way to stay right in the middle of the action, because you will literally be sleeping a few feet away from the stages. When you go festival camping, you can wake up, roll out of bed, and walk across the festival grounds and start your day.
Similarly, you can walk a few feet away from where you have been dancing all day and night, right back into your tent to sleep and do it all again the next day.
How To Prepare For Music Festival Camping:
- Make arrangements for parking
- Come up with a packing list
- Assemble all of your gear
- Decide what you will be doing for food and pack accordingly
- Load up your trunk and get going!
The first thing that you should check off your list while you are preparing for festival camping is making your parking arrangements. When it comes to sleeping on the festival grounds, you will usually have two options: camping on a basic campsite or car camping.
Car camping is basically camping in a designated location where you are able to pull your car in and park it right next to your tent. If you are driving to the festival and you are buying your tickets in time to book one, you definitely should.
Next, you will need to come up with a packing list. This list should include everything that you must have with you from day one to the time that you return. This should be your personal hygiene items, extra clothing, food, and the supplies you need for sleeping.
Assemble all of your camping gear, and even practice setting up your tent at home before you depart. This will make the process much easier than not.
Finally, decide what you will be doing for food and pack accordingly. You could choose to cook all of your meals, which would require you to bring a small camp kitchen set up and some ingredients for cooking.
On the other hand, you can purchase meals from food vendors and eat your own snacks in between, or a mixture of the two. It all depends on your preferences and budget.
Once you have completed all of these steps, you will be ready to load up the car and get going!
What Should I Pack For a Music Festival?
After reading all about preparing for music festivals in the previous sections of this article, you might still be stuck on what you should actually pack.
There are several essentials that you will absolutely need to survive a day or weekend at a music festival, and it is important not to forget anything that you will need to have with you.
As a result, I came up with one more list that will tell you exactly what you need to pack for any music festival. Take a look at the list down below, where you will find a list of the main essentials that go into a great music festival experience.
What To Pack For a Music Festival:
- Travel sized soap and shampoo
- Razor
- Travel sized deodorant and lotion
- Toothbrush and toothpaste
- Hair styling products and cosmetics
- Festival outfits
- Sunscreen
- Water Bottle (or water bottle backpack)
- Sunglasses
- Comfortable shoes (closed toed)
- Phone charger
- Belt/shoulder bag
The first set of items that you will need for a successful music festival experience are related to your personal hygiene. Just like any other trip or outing, you will need to pick up some travel sized soaps and shampoos, along with anything else that you might use in the shower.
If you will be attending the festival for several days in a row, you might want to find a small travel sized razor or bring the one that you already have. Travel sized deodorant and body lotion will also be your best friend when you are in a hotel between the festival days.
On the other hand, if you will be festival camping, you should make some other arrangements in this aspect. There will be no showers, so you should bring things like hand sanitizer, baby wipes, and dry shampoo, along with your regular deodorant and lotion.
Additionally, you will need your toothbrush and toothpaste. In this case, you can also find a convenient travel sized product that comes with a protective cover that will be much easier to use while you are moving around.
Depending on what you are planning to do with your hair and makeup during the festival, you will need to plan accordingly with hair products and other cosmetics. It helps to organize all of these things into a small pouch to avoid spills in your luggage, especially if you will be incorporating loose glitter at all.
One of the biggest things that you will need to have with you for a music festival are your outfits. While attending a music festival, this is your chance to create something beautiful and express yourself.
You should make sure that you have all of your clothing pieces and accessories to make the full ensembles. The last thing you want to do is forget something at home and lose one or more of your completed outfits that you were probably really excited about wearing.
Along with all of the more obvious stuff, you will need sunscreen and sunglasses for every day at the festival. This might seem like something that is not important at the time of packing, but you would be surprised to learn how fast you can really get a sunburn from neglecting this step.
You will thank yourself for packing these essential items, along with a reusable water bottle of some kind. A lot of people who attend music festivals frequently will invest in a water bottle backpack for a more hands free operation, but you can get by with just a plastic bottle for your first time.
Comfortable shoes are a must, and you will definitely need a belt or shoulder bag of some kind to keep all of these essentials on hand at all times. Finally, don’t forget your phone charger, or a portable one if you are camping.
As you can see, there are lots of steps that go into planning and preparing for a music festival, but when you are thorough in all of the processes that were outlined in this article, you will be thanking yourself when you get there.
