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Let There Be Light

Tips on illuminating your reception

You’ve spent months choosing every detail of your reception—the lavender orchids, the gold-rimmed china, your flowing Carvalli gown, your bridesmaids in shimmering silk. All this planning deserves to be displayed in its best light. Sadly, many brides remain in the dark on the subject of lighting their perfect day. But with a little help from a planner or lighting designer, you can guarantee to show your celebration in all its radiant glory.

Lighting can make or break an atmosphere says Bradley Snyder, creative director for White Wedding Day Events. “If you spend a lot of money on beautiful centerpieces, food, dresses and venue but don’t have the lighting to make it all pop, it’s all for naught.” Wedding stylist Thomas Bui agrees: “To me, lighting is not a luxury; it’s 30 percent of décor.” In essence, it can bring to a bland room the warmth, excitement and sexiness that you want reflected in your celebration.

It’s not just your atmosphere that’s at stake, but also your wedding photos. “There’s a vast difference in images that come out of a wedding that has been lit and one that has not,” says Bronson Pate of Bauman Photographers. “When you’re shooting photos in a poorly lit reception hall, the background turns black. If you get some lighting up on the walls, the whole background becomes a canvas of color, which creates a more beautiful image.”

While a good planner can help you design a lighting scheme to match the tone and theme of your event, it also helps to know a few of your options.

First of all, the colors of the lights should complement your theme, but avoid lots of green and blue, which can make people look pasty. Warm colors like amber and red not only complement skin tone but work on almost any room décor, says Bui. These colors can be projected onto the walls from floor to ceiling, a technique called uplighting, which is the most basic and economical way to light your event.

Other lighting basics include pin spots, spotlights hung from the ceiling and used to highlight particular areas of the reception, like the cake table, floral arrangements or buffet. For a personal touch, ask about gobos, spotlights with an overlaid stencil that projects an image onto the wall or dance floor, such as roses, hearts or, better yet, your own custom monogram.

Intelligent lights are high-tech computerized lights that can be programmed to move and/or change colors throughout the evening. Some designers recommend changing the colors every few minutes; others like Bui prefer changing them every half hour, perhaps starting with a morning sun that slowly fades into sunset toward the end of the celebration. According to Matt Short of Flashback Stage Lighting, special effects can be created with intelligent lights that combine moving colors and patterns at different intensities to produce a watery or fiery background on the walls or perhaps a romantic nighttime sky with twinkling stars. Some lights can even project a live shot of the wedding from a video camera and move it throughout the room.

If you imagined your reception lit with a thousand candles, you may have the fire marshal at your door because of restrictions at many venues. Fortunately, there are a number of battery-operated natural wax candles and candelabras that flicker just like the real thing. Also out of favor with many designers are twinkle lights, those white Christmas lights that have been a wedding staple for years. “It’s an affordable effect and it can add a lot of atmosphere,” says Snyder, “but there are other options that people could exercise.”

What’s hot? For a retro-glam look, consider a mirror ball, which is making a big comeback, says Snyder. “It can create a beautiful starry night atmosphere with the swirling white dots flying about the room.” Synchronize the lights with the music, and you’ll create a high-energy dance club effect. Or choose Chinese paper lanterns for a clean Zen feel. These round, white lanterns (with no writing on them) can be lit with a bulb to match your color scheme. Another popular trend is mixed chandeliers. “If somebody wants to do something very old world romantic, they might have people sit at one long feast table, so we’ll do a series of mismatched crystal and wrought iron chandeliers hung at various heights down the center,” says Snyder. “It’s an elegant look that reeks of great taste and a lot of money.”

Lighting can also help create stylish conversation areas adjacent to the dance floor. Snyder designs what he calls Miami-chic micro lounges accented with long, rectangular crystal chandeliers. Guests can kick back a restorative libation in a swank sofa or Barcelona chair and then get back on the dance floor. For tent venues, Bui sets up conversation areas outside lit with different effects to give the feeling of moving from room to room.

For outdoor venues, lights mark the perimeter of your party, and uplit trees and architectural elements enhance the natural beauty. Snyder recommends using market stringers outside, strings of round lights, about the size of ping pong balls, generally hung in a crisscross pattern and fitted with colored bulbs to match the décor. One alfresco essential: make sure your planner has a generator to supply all the power for the lighting, caterer and band. “Having your power go out even for 30 seconds is a long time,” cautions Short, who says that even some hotel venues require additional generator power.

Finally, for an unforgettable climax to your event, consider fireworks. Says John Peluso of San Diego Fireworks, most wedding fireworks shows last two to three minutes with a price tag of about $1,200 a minute. Of course, the first task is to make sure the venue is suitable (nearby golf courses work well) and acquire a permit; though even in compact areas close-proximity fireworks can still make a big impression accenting the first dance or wedding toast.

So how much should you budget for your luminous extravaganza? Snyder recommends 10% of your total cost. Short suggests a minimum of $1,000, though he has also designed lighting for weddings at a cost of up to $60,000. The most economical effects include uplighting and twinkle lights. Prepare to pay more for the intelligent lights, which take longer to set up and program. Still, as Snyder points out, “When the daylight goes down and the lights go up, it’s money very well spent.”

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