Emma Louise Connolly On How To Host A Festival At Home

Missing live music? The next best thing is hosting your own festival in your garden.

Emma

by Bonnie McLaren |
Updated on

While most of us are used to lockdown by now, if you’re a festival fan, last weekend was particularly hard. Instead of strutting around Worthy Farm in wellies, we were all forced to relive Glastonbury{ =nofollow}s of yesteryear with the BBC’s highlights (we’d forgotten just how good that Beyonce set was from 2011) while slouched on the sofa.

Not ideal, we have to be honest.

However, one couple who didn’t let that get her down was model Emma Louise Connolly, who hosted their own mini festival at home. Gardenbury, if you will. And it looked way better than our own weekends.

‘I went to Wilderness for the first time last year and it was probably one of the best weekends of my life,’ Emma tells us. ‘I just loved the vibe, being surrounded by everyone running around, being a bit careless and silly. And that was great fun. But this year but we were supposed to be going to Glastonbury. It was going be my first year!'

As well as the music, Emma was looking forward to the festival fashion. 'I would have had to have worn something absolutely ridiculous, which I would have loved,' she laughs.

Alas, the couple managed to make the most of it, dressing in festival gear and setting up a cute mini Glasto in their garden with a wooden mini-bar and an outdoor projector from eBay, ordering in pizza and loads of alcohol (something she says was an essential). 'It was very fun,' she says. 'We basically scrolled through eBay to find some amazing pieces that we could use for our little Gardenbury set up, but also use throughout summer.'

Her advice if you want to do the same on one of the many free lockdown weekends? ‘You could definitely go all out,’ she says. ‘We stayed quite tame purely because of our neighbours: we weren’t as loud and proud as maybe we could have been. And I think you just have fun and treat it as if you are there. I think it's obviously a big party, and I think if you do loads of fun things and just enjoy each other's company, then that's a nice outcome to have from this situation.’

‘Hopefully it’ll be once in a lifetime we will be locked in our gardens,’ Emma says, but if anything, this summer has only hyped her up more for Glastonbury 2021. ‘I’ll be banging on the doors - I don't even know if there are doors.’

READ MORE: Lauren Laverne On The Life-Changing Power Of Glastonbury Festival

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