Tag Archives: Uplighting

Do I need uplighting for my wedding?

Do I need uplighting?

Short answer: no. The only thing you need are a ring and a marriage license. You probably don’t need uplighting. But if you’re having a party, you may want to look into how lighting can drastically affect your event space. Uplighting is one of the more popular wedding lighting options, and for good reason too. The proper placement of the fixtures can do wonders for your space. And just as importantly: your pictures. Pair that with the relative affordability vs other decor options and you begin to understand its popularity. Uplighting services are among the many lighting options available for your wedding. Check out the many possibilities in our Color Picker!

Need uplighting science museum of virginia — Powerful narrow-beamed uplighting project all the way up the columns of the Science Museum of Virginia, in Richmond, Va.

Choosing the right wedding lighting service.

While uplighting is a popular option, if you think it’s not the right service for your event, you may be right. If you’re having an outdoor event, look into bistro lighting. String lighting effects such as bistro lighting are great for lighting rustic and traditional weddings. Perhaps you don’t need lighting at all. With custom drape, there are thousands of possibilities. A well-placed drape backdrop looks fantastic behind a head table, or as a backdrop for pictures.

Bistro lighting is ideal for outdoor events because of both its classic feel and it’s ability to cover large areas with light.

Your wedding

When it comes to your wedding, we know how tough it can be to manage your budget. Here’s an easy list to help you decide if you need uplighting for your wedding.

Amber uplighting commonwealth club wedding — Amber uplighting for a wedding at the Commonwealth Club, Richmond, Virginia.

You may need uplighting if…

Your venue could use some additional ambiance. Couples pick venues for dozens of different reasons. Couples sometimes pick venues for sentimental reasons. Sometimes they pick them based completely on the location. Sometimes a venue has fantastic food, but just needs a face lift. Uplighting can do wonders for a bland slab of drywall or an unimpressive corner, tying it into the look of the rest of your party instead of sticking out.
Your wedding is in a beautiful space. If you’re getting married in a remarkable old hotel, a modern gem or a building with some history, lighting will often highlight the beauty in an already impressive space. Architectural features like columns, windows, and ceilings can be lit for ambient effect. Materials like unfinished brick and plaster often look dynamic and beautiful when uplit. Like most things, if done wrong, uplighting can be tacky. If designed correctly, uplighting will take the look of your venue to the next level.
Your wedding is in a familiar space. Increasingly more couples are using old barns, non-conventional event spaces, or just using their parents back yard for their weddings. This offers a new perspective on familiar items. This adds a flash of drama that is crucial in an otherwise ordinary space.

Lighting drape ugly room — A little uplighting and drape goes a long way in an otherwise ordinary room. See the final product below!

need uplighting drape — Think big: Lighting and drape can completely change the look of your event space.

You probably don’t need uplighting if…

You need to cut costs to the extreme. Not everyone can afford everything they want for their wedding, we completely understand. Things like entertainment and rentals all need to be taken care of first and sometimes lighting doesn’t make the cut. That’s okay, uplighting isn’t a prerequisite to have a good time.
Your venue includes it. If your venue already provides uplighting, make sure they show it to you in action. Photographers often edit pictures to make dim lights appear to be brighter, so you’re going to want to see it with your own eyes. Venues can often provide uplighting packages included with your rental fee, just make sure they’re giving you the same thing a professional lighting company would.
You have a daytime wedding. While professional lighting companies carry powerful uplighting, fighting against the sun can be futile. Bistro lighting (because of it’s classic look) and drape are more effective choices for daytime events.

The Mill Fine Creek Uplighting Wedding Lighting — Sometimes daylight washes out uplighting, but other times it’s a fantastic accent. A designer can help you decide what’s best for your wedding.

Still unsure if you need uplighting or not? Reach out to one of our friendly designers to ask questions, or start planning for your perfect event…right now.

Event & Wedding Lighting at the John Marshall Ballrooms

Lighting the John Marshall Ballrooms

The beautiful historic ballrooms at the Hotel John Marshall are a Richmond, Virginia institution. They make for a very lovely venue for wedding ceremonies & receptions, corporate parties, and other special occasions. With two stunning ballrooms, a pre-function lobby space, bridal suites, and a hip-looking lounge, there’s plenty of room to fit most events. The Hotel John Marshall provides plenty of space for any event and the authentic look of the historic building brings a next-level amount of class not found elsewhere in Richmond.

As a selection for a venue, you can’t get much better than the John Marshall. However, as is the case with almost all venues, the ambiance can be improved dramatically simply by adding a few lighting features. Check out the details of the most popular services below.

Uplighting

An especially popular technique to use in this space is uplighting. Using LED lighting, you are able to set the mood using the colors of your choosing. In addition, uplighting has the power to make a large room feel intimate. Beyond that, choosing your uplighting colors can be fun! Try out our powerful Color Picker tool and explore the many different possibilities uplighting can provide.

Custom Gobo

Custom gobos are also relevant in the world of wedding lighting. They are a fantastic way to make your event personalized and memorable. Frequently, a monogram gobo is projected on to the curtain on stage. This location is desirable as the gobo is centered and presented in a way the entire room can see it. Gobos can also be aimed on the dance floor or even in the lobby so guests may see it as they enter.

Pin Spotting

If you are planning on spending a great deal of money on beautiful centerpieces, you don’t want to have them washed out by keeping the work lights on full in the ballroom, and you definitely don’t want them to be overlooked if the lights are a little dimmer. With pin spots, you are able to keep the lights at romantic level while having your magnificent centerpieces pop out of the background and create an eye catching effect. Consequently, pin spotting will allow your guests to admire the centerpieces all night and have them stand out in photos for years to come.

Bistro Lighting

Bistro lighting has the potential to have the biggest “wow” factor. When done correctly (and safely), bistro lighting creates an unparalleled experience. Working with the large ceilings and beautiful chandeliers, bistro lighting hanging from the balconies in the John Marshall produces a very intimate feel. Many popular Pinterest posts also feature bistro lighting.

Draping

The large space provided by the Virginia and Marshall ballrooms can sometimes feel massive. Custom drape features be can added to the space to reduce the expanse or transform the space. Furthermore, drape for weddings are completely customizable and many colors are available. Drape can have bunches and gathers, door arches, complement existing pieces, or create pieces of their own.

You can visit the website for The Historic John Marshall Ballrooms here. See the pictures from this post and many more in our galleries here.

Richmond Weddings Expo Fashion Show Lighting

Richmond Wedding Expo Fashion Show

Richmond Weddings just released this amazing video from the Richmond Weddings Expo Fashion Show we provided production for back in July. If you’re getting married in Richmond, you need to be familiar with these folks.

You can check out some photos of the show below!

All photos by Third Eye Studios:

Our beautiful high definition wedding chandelier gobo!

Uplighting gives the stage a great look.

Stephanie & Justin’s Wedding

Got a call from Stephanie on Tuesday for a last minute wedding the coming Sunday. Stephanie needed uplighting for her wedding reception at The Hotel John Marshall here in Richmond. Summer is a busy season for weddings, and while we already had other jobs going on that day, we were easily able to accommodate another event. The next day, Stephanie told us she was also interested in a custom wedding gobo with her and Justin’s names on it. Fortunately, we are no stranger to rush jobs and manufacturing a last minute gobo before the date of her wedding was no trouble. We went through the design process with Stephanie, and had the custom gobo just in time!

Stephanie wanted a warm color for the uplighting on the beautiful walls of the ballroom, we suggested our champagne look, always an amazing look in there!

Aditi & Aditya’s Engagement Party

We had a very eventful (pun intended) Memorial day weekend, with events all over Richmond. Among those was Aditi’s & Aditya’s engagement party, and we were lucky enough to work with the very talented Candace Morgan, who sent over some lovely photos. If you absolutely love what you see, you can check Candace out here.

Aditi wanted the rotunda to be a classy blue and gold, and the Science Museum of Virginia was a wonderful venue to accomplish such a look. We went with thin beamed wedding uplights to accent the museum’s neoclassical columns. The powerful LED uplights reached all the way up the fifty foot ceilings of the Science Museum and made the room look absolutely stunning.

Congratulations to Aditi & Aditya on a beautiful engagement party!

Total Room Transformation

To show the power of event lighting, we set up some of our most popular wedding lighting services in an abandoned basement. This helps to give a better idea of what wedding and event lighting can do to completely transform a room for your wedding reception, ceremony, or any event or party you have at all.

While all the individual pieces that make up the perfect wedding or event are equally important, lighting is the only one that can change how everything is perceived. Lighting can change the look and feel of the entire event, from the mood, to the color the place setting appear to be, make sure you have the right team handling your event. You can learn more by checking out our informational article on wedding and event lighting. Take your event lighting to the next level.

Check out a full display of our services here.

7 Things You Need To Know About Wedding Lighting

Looking for wedding lighting? Lighting up your special day? Here are some things about wedding lighting you should know:
Wedding entertainment is an extremely competitive business. Many couples are shopping around looking for the most affordable solution, while wedding vendors are providing crossover services that they are often unqualified to perform correctly. Uplighting is a fairly new addition in lighting weddings, but since early 2000, it’s been one of the fastest growing services offered by production companies.

Uplighting has been becoming increasingly popular since 2006. Graph courtesy of Google Trends.

With LED technology becoming more affordable and more widely available, companies are able to offer lighting services which greatly improve the overall look of a wedding or reception. We compiled this list to help brides and grooms avoid common mistakes, and become more aware of what is available to take their weddings to the next level. This list is in no particular order.

1. What the heck is a gobo?

A gobo is a template — made of glass or steel — that is inserted into a lighting fixture to obtain a projected image. Steel gobos are typically more cost effective, while glass gobos yield a higher quality image. Some common applications of gobos include:

Monogram names of bride and groom projected on dancefloor at wedding

Sponsor company logos projected at event

Logo/Brand projected in retail shop / gallery

Logo projected at entrance of hotel / restaurant

Pattern gobos used on walls, floor, ceiling to create textured look (as pictured above)

Today, a monogram gobo at a wedding is practically required, and is usually most recommended by photographers, who love having shots of the bride and groom with the monogram in the back.

2. Be careful using businesses that offer wedding lighting as a secondary service.

Many mobile DJs and tenting companies also offer services such as uplighting, but it’s usually best to avoid such companies for lighting services. You wouldn’t want your DJ bringing in your catering, and in much the same way, you probably don’t want them doing your lighting either. While a tenting company may be able to offer you a great price on LED uplights that they purchased at Guitar Center, professional lighting companies are more likely to have the best, most powerful, (and most reliable) equipment on the market. Professional wedding lighting companies will also have a lot more knowledge about lighting, color theory, power consumption, and are going to be able to do far more than just uplighting.

3. Wired vs. Wireless LEDs and how they impact your wedding lighting.

We often find that brides and grooms are misled by companies into thinking wireless solutions are the only way to go. Be wary of companies that claim to only use battery powered LEDs and use phrases such as “no messy wires.” The truth is, any professional production company should be able to offer both solutions. Many times, wireless LEDs are required for areas that it’s impossible to get power to, but wireless LEDs run on batteries with lives of 4 – 8 hours, and this number decreases over time as the battery wears out. Wired LEDs are far more powerful, i.e. all of the ambient lights don’t have to be off in order to see the beam and color. Wireless LEDs are great time-savers, and can be extremely useful, but good lighting companies know how to hide all wires out of sight anyway, so make sure you go wireless for the right reasons!

John Marshall Ballrooms Wedding Lighting

When it comes to lighting, there are thousands of magical possibilities for you to choose from.

4. Wash vs. Beam: What’s the difference?

If you’ve been in the market for wedding lighting for a bit, you might have heard these terms tossed around. The difference is pretty simple: a beam light will be more like a straight column of light, while a wash will have more spread. The important thing to note is that LED lights come in all shapes and sizes, and the thing that distinguishes the width of the beam is the beam angle on each particular fixture. There is no rule as to what looks best, but you should be asking your vendor questions about the options they have available for you.

Make sure that you have options to choose from, and don’t corner yourself into using a look that you’re not in love with.

Bistro lighting can add a beautiful classic look.

5. Is Bistro Lighting for bistros?

Also known as festoon lighting, bistro lighting is strings of evenly spaced miniature light bulbs. Bistro has become incredibly popular as wedding lighting, and is great in conjunction with uplighting; with both, there is a nice color wash, but also a classy incandescent ambient look. The important thing to know about bistro lights is that they can be a safety hazard if installed by the wrong company. Make sure your lighting vendor is using properly rigged aircraft cable (very strong, thin, cable) for runs over 20 feet. Anything more than a 20 foot run begins to get very heavy, and all of the weight is held up by the thin electrical cable that is powering the lights. The last thing you want on your special day is string lights falling onto your guests from improperly rigged lighting.

If it looks unsafe, it probably is, and safety should always be the primary concern.

6. Waterproof Lighting

If you’re expecting to have lighting outside, don’t hire any company that can’t provide you with waterproof lighting. The technical term for equipment rated for outdoor use is “IP 65.” Nobody wants it to rain on their wedding day, but sometimes, bad weather cannot be avoided. Make sure your event isn’t left in the dark while your lighting vendor scrambles to collect all their equipment to avoid damage.

IP65 LEDs are rugged, sealed, and can stand up to most any type of weather. Photo courtesy of Chauvet.

7. RGB vs. RGBW (got hue?)

We’ve been throwing a lot of acronyms around, but this is one that you may be familiar with. RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. LEDs use these three colors of light in order to mix to millions of different colors. Until recently, we were limited to using Red, Green, and Blue, but with newer technology comes more versatility. RGB LEDs work fine to mix to many colors, but doesn’t have a lot of control over hue.

Achievable color spectrum with RGB LEDs.

The addition of white LEDs gives far more color control, and makes achieving brilliant pastels a viable option. The white LEDs also help to bridge the spectrum gap between colors, making a far larger variety of colors possible.

White LEDs make a wider selection of color options possible.

That’s a brief primer on the world of wedding lighting. If you have any questions related to wedding lighting, feel free to give us a call! Ready to start planning lighting for your wedding? Click here to get started! The Lighting & Sound Company is located in Richmond, Virginia, and provides lighting support all over the east coast.