Lighting

 

What kind of lighting do I need for my wedding event?

There’s an old adage location is everything in real estate. For the wedding industry, lighting is almost everything.

Outdoor Events
For most outdoor events, natural lighting is one the best organic ways to showcase your wedding. There are other structures that we’ve seen utilized, i.e. gazebos, and canopies. They are great on a hot & humid day, but most covered gazebos will partially block sunlight depending on which part of the day you choose. You really need to speak with your wedding photographer about idea spots to shoot your wedding before choosing the wedding venue location.
Wedding Gazebo

Indoor Events
Many hotels and new banquet halls have recessed can lighting and chandeliers that project soft white light. As a modern bride, this is what you want. This type of light gives a nice glow to any room. On the contrary, some older facilities including some hotels still have those darn tube lights from way back. I mean come on! Before booking a wedding hall, check out the lighting, ask the coordinator if the light’s dimmable. We have seen some halls have two options, either on or off.

Tube Lights

Indoor Atrium

What kind of additional lighting do I need?
Say you choose a hall or hotel and you decide on wall uplighting. As the name suggests, these are lights that sit on the floor and project a beam upward while disseminating along the way ultimately hitting the ceiling. Uplights contain LED bulbs which contain Red, Blue, Green, Amber and Ultraviolet colors that can be mixed to produce a plethora of color options. These lights are usually supplied by the DJ or the Decorator. They come in wired and wireless. Also, the colors can be manually mixed by pressing the buttons, or DMXing them so all lights can change in unison at a faster and more efficient pace, including on the fly. Wireless looks cleaner and safer, since there are no cords to trip over, however they seem to have more technical issues. Albeit their small disadvantage, wireless LED uplights are the way to go. Now we have spotlights, technically called ellipsoidal lights or followspots, these are great to highlight certain areas i.e. cake, stage and dance floor. You maybe wondering, don’t I already have some light. Yes, that’s partly true in that you have some light but not enough for your purpose of being seen. We can argue that if something that isn’t barely visible probably isn’t going to matter or direct much attention. Next, there are Gobos…we’ll talk about that in another post.

Spotlight