Reception lighting

Cory and I thought it might be nice to spice up the lighting in the ballroom for the reception. I did some research and contacted a lighting company that looks like they do an amazing job.

(Don't worry, we're not having totem poles or pictures of leopards on the walls.)

We set up an appointment for someone from their company to meet us at the Westin on June 5th (the same day we had our menu tasting). He turned out to be really nice and had a lot of good ideas. Here are the things we decided on:

24' Drape behind the stage where the two-tiered head table will be on
Cool blue uplighting along all four walls
White uplighting for the drape behind the stage
Washes of moodlighting for the dance floor in warm and flattering colors (I think he said pink and lavender were the best)
Spotlighting of the cake table
Spotlighting of the two 6-ft. candy tables

I really wanted to have the entire wall behind the stage draped but it wasn't in the budget 'cuz we added the dance floor lighting. Actually, what am I talking about?! We didn't even have a line item for additional lighting in the budget! We were planning on just using the hotel's existing lights! Oh man... this is what I mean by "unexpected costs" in that blog post called "Budget." But they say that the lighting can really change the ambience and look of a room, especially the use of uplights. There's no way to know how it'll look until the day of so we'll see. Here are some examples of uplighting:




It's been almost two months since he gave me the contract. We were going back and forth trying to decide if we could lower the amount of uplights (he highly recommended that we don't do that)... or if we needed to spotlight the head tables (we opted for the uplighting behind the stage in case the bridal party gets too hot underneath the spotlights)... or spotlight the centerpieces (we figured that the floralytes in the vases are enough). Also, the spotlighting of anything required prior approval from the hotel since the lighting company would need to put tracks on the ceilings. Thankfully, the hotel is very lenient and has no problems with it.

It's a done deal 'cuz I just faxed him the contract and put the original and deposit in the mail!