Friend Fest 2023

Written By Erin Farmer

One thing about me, I LOVE to host. There’s just something exciting about curating a fun experience for my friends and family. So, in Summer 2022, I got some friends together and hosted the inaugural Friend Fest on the San Juan Islands in Washington. I had 2 goals that year:

  1. Do some wholesome tie dying with my friends

  2. Shake my ass on a boat

Now, I just want y’all to know right now that there was no ass shaking on that boat - since the San Juan Islands don’t really get warm in late June. (This was the first learning moment). I was 50 degrees on that water and we mostly just kicked the shit on the boat with some good food and music. As for the tie dying, that was definitely done, but I never heard from one of my friends after that trip (this was learning moment 2 - find better friends HA). So I never got to see how their shirts turned out.

This year, I wanted to honor the friends that remained and the new ones that Okien and I had made since. Hince, 2nd Annual Friend Fest was on the horizon.

✨It all started with an idea✨ How can I host an even better Friend fest this go round? I wrote these ideas down in the Notions app (where I keep all my ambitious ideas).

This helped me outline what exactly I wanted to do. Keyword is ‘wanted’(there’s a learning moment here too). My intentions were the following:

  1. Make this as close to a “festival” as one person can

    1. 10 + Attendees

    2. Official Newsletters

  2. Curate the Vibes

    1. Friend Fest Merch

    2. A thank you gift

    3. A schedule

  3. Tie Dye and Shake my ass on the boat!

I would have to put a lot of work in to get this together, but it would all be worth it, right?

THE SET UP

Okay, so the first goal was to get 10 or more people. That was a little ambitious from the start. If y'all remember I went negative 1 friend at last year’s Friend Fest, so this year I needed to come with that heat in terms of attendees. Luckily I had my friend from last year, plus her boyfriend, plus 3 friends I met through her. AND my best friend from Texas was visiting that weekend, so we were already halfway there! I had to recruit Okien for the other 5, and my social circle was tapped out. Luckily he had a good friend from Seattle, plus a coworker turned best friend and his wife, another co-worker we love, and a friend from college that was planning on visiting around that time. BOOM that’s 10 - Goal achieved…. For now

Next was the Newsletter. I went into Canva because honestly, Canva is one of the most helpful tools when you don’t have much design experience. In my opinion, if you can make a powerpoint, you can do anything in canva. Anyway, I made this cute Friend Fest poster to disperse amongst the invited guests.

Now it was time to curate the vibes. I thought to myself, “If I was invited to a ‘Friend Fest’, what would make that time the best time ever?” Well, within reason of course. First, if you’ve ever been to a festival, one of the things that you want to do is get some merch. So that’s what I did 👇🏾

Back to Canva I went to make a t-shirt design. My idea was that I could make a design that would look good once everyone custom designed their shirts. Then I downloaded the design and went to Custom Ink to have another company make the shirts. There was a moment where I contemplated getting a circuit printer to do the shirts myself. But (learning moment) I don't have that much time or energy on my hands. If you can afford it, pay for services like that, you know?

Next was the thank you gift. I love when people take time out of their day in celebration of each other, and no one was forced to attend my friend fest. That’s why I thought it was imperative that I have a thank you gift for everyone. 

So I got to thinking, “What would an attendee want as a gift?”.

I wanted to make custom bucket hats for everyone, meaning I would have to purchase 10+ bucket hats and then find a way to embroidery them. This was another learning moment for me, since you need to have a business account in order to purchase bucket hats in bulk for cheap. All the websites I looked up that didn’t require a business ID were super sketchy and I was worried about the quality. So I went ahead and made Trial and Erin LLC. Since I have a website, some different business activities under that name, it felt like the right time to finally make it official.

I used KBETHOS to order the bucket hats. Once they arrived, I individually, hand stitched the friend fest logo and an icon on the from of the hats. This took a few days off and on. And ultimately, everyone was delighted to have their foreheads covered in the Friend Fest Gift.

The final part of Curating the Vibe was creating a schedule. In order to do this, I had to call in some help from by boyfriend (since he can drive the boat) and asked him to make the arrangement. With all the information down, I was finally able to send the newsletter. I went to the trusty Chat GPT to write an official newsletter message in order to let attendees have all the info they need.

The morning of friend fest was very calm. Okien and I had been preparing for this day for more than a few months now. Everything was coming into place. As our friends started to arrive. We played some music. I had sent a collab invite for the Friend Fest Spotify playlist, so it was nice to have a very diverse and fun playlist to enjoy while tie dying and on the boat. I was actually so busy with hosting and having fun, that I barely remembered to take videos and pictures. But I will cherish the ones I did get for a very long time.

Oh yeah, one last thing  - I got to shake my ass on the boat 😊

Erin Farmer