It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and you want to honor the season with an event filled with the sights and sounds of winter. Organizing a winter festival is an exciting way to help promote your business, create a fun occasion for your community, and tap into your creative and coordination skills. Continue reading to explore how to plan a successful outdoor winter festival.
Choose a Location
First and foremost, make sure the place you choose to host your festival can accommodate the number of visitors you expect. If attendees get crammed together, or everything is too spread out, they will decide not to spend their time there and leave. Look for wide-open spaces such as public parks, parking lots, and town squares that can fit in all the foot traffic without being too widespread.
Keep Accessibility in Mind
It’s essential not to choose any old location simply because it has a lot of room. When you’re deciding between many sites, think about how easy it is to get there and move within the space. Give priority to areas with convenient parking, public transit, and wide paths.
Recruit as Many Volunteers as Possible
Festivals are massive affairs, and there’s no way you can handle everything on your own. Focus on attracting people from diverse backgrounds who can help with decorating, obtaining permits, managing various booths, and checking tickets. If you’ve previously arranged similar events, contact those individuals to see if they’d be ready to help you again.
Understand the Size and Scope of Your Plans
The number of volunteers you’ll need is decided by various criteria including your budget, the size of the event, and how much decoration you’ll need. For smaller festivals, a few dozen trustworthy individuals may be enough to set things up. For more momentous events—when you expect tens of thousands of people over several days or weeks—you may require hundreds or even thousands of volunteers to help you realize your vision.
Pick a Theme
Having a theme gives your event a proper structure and allows you to set expectations for what your guests will experience when they come through. Once you’ve decided on a theme, it’ll help you dictate what type of booths you will have, your decorations, and how you can promote everything. You can go as broad or narrow as you want, but keep in mind that the more inclusive your theme is, the more people you can attract.
Christmas Time is Here
For many people, winter conjures up images of Santa making his trip around the world in one night, and fir trees lit up and covered in decorations. Adorn your festival with various Christmas decorations and spread holiday cheer to everyone who stops by. Keep in mind that not everyone practices Christmas, so if you choose a Christmas theme, expand it to be as inclusive as possible of other practices.
Winter Around the World
If you want to get really creative, go completely international with your choice by celebrating winter holidays around the globe. That opens your festival to honor as many traditions as possible and allows your guests to experience things they wouldn’t usually get to enjoy. For example, you can have booths the feature blinis from Russia or spiced beef from Ireland.
Snowy Woods
Incorporate rustic nature and snow-covered woodlands for a cozy affair. Use fantasy settings such as the wintery woods in The Chronicles of Narnia to create a sense of wonder. Create an entrance of trees draped with lights to bring your guests through the portal into a landscape dotted with rich green hues, vibrant red, glittering golds, and earthy browns.
Obtain Vendors
Arguably the most significant reason you go to festivals is to enjoy tons of new food. Vendors can supply food from their food booths for everyone to enjoy. While you can have the usual hot chocolate, make things even more fun by having spiced wine, or having a vendor who serves unique foods like schnitzel.
Ask Local Restaurants
The best way to get food and drink vendors is to send emails to many different local restaurants asking if they’d be interested in taking control of a booth. This gives you the chance to supply a boost to your local economy and allows them to promote their business. The best part is that they can staff their booths with their own workers, freeing your volunteers to take on other tasks.
Get Entertainment
Look into obtaining bands and other entertainment options to play throughout the event. Consider your budget and send out social media posts and emails looking for people who’d like to perform. Outside-of-the-box entertainment could also include contests or ice carving competitions. Those will wow people and make the festival even more enjoyable.
Bring in Arts and Crafts
Bringing local artisans to your festival will add a ton of joy to the atmosphere. Allow them to display and sell their work! Gifts of art, jewelry, apparel, and other handcrafted items are perfect for the holidays. When people walk around your festival and see stalls with crafty gifts and supplies, they’ll be curious and engaged. Wonderful rustic crafts will give your event a homemade, nostalgic feeling, which will make it even more memorable for everyone who comes.
Accommodate People’s Bathroom Needs
Your outdoor winter festival may see hundreds or even thousands of visitors a day—but if people can’t use the bathroom, they’ll quickly leave and let others know not to bother. Make sure you have enough porta-potties or portable restroom trailers set up in convenient locations. If you have booths that offer alcoholic beverages, people will often need to use the bathroom multiple times. Get plenty of units and Porta Potty holding tanks so you can avoid long lines and excessive servicing.
Consider Portable Restroom Trailers
Depending on your geographic location and weather, consider portable restroom trailers in addition to porta-potties. The trailers offer several advantages, including heating and lighting that make them perfect for the darker winter weather. They’re also effortless to move around, which is convenient when your festival takes place over multiple days, and you may need to place them at various locations.
Have Hand Washing Stations Available
Your festival is going to be full of people walking all over the place and handling and touching lots of things. As such, it’s very important—especially nowadays—to have plenty of hand-washing stations available. They have many benefits. For instance, when people can wash their hands at a station, they won’t have to take up the toilets when other people need to use them.
Now that you know how to plan a successful outdoor winter festival, you’re ready to put in the time and effort to pull everything off. Floods Royal Flush can accommodate all your portable restroom needs so your guests can enjoy themselves at your event without needing to worry about their bathroom needs. Feel free to contact us with any questions about our services.