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Whole rooms washed in breathtaking shades of rose, purple or blue. Floral arrangements that pop to life, and tabletops that shimmer and glow like an evening skyline.
When it comes to wedding receptions, could lighting be the new floral?
That's a pretty accurate assessment, says Marcus Rollins, who has been in the event entertainment business for 20 years, as a master of ceremonies and DJ. He immersed himself in the lighting portion of the business in the past year or so.
"There's a buzz going through the bridal community. It's easier to sell than entertainment right now," says Rollins, who has lighted weddings at venues throughout the Fort Worth, Texas, area. "Lighting is now a term that brides are now asking questions about, many times, even before they're asking about entertainment. Once they see a hall that's been lit well, with a monogram on the dance floor, and pin lighting on the tables, they just gush like crazy."
Think about today's rock concerts, he says. It's all intelligent lighting — computerized lighting that can be manipulated by telling a fixture where to point, what color you want it to be and whether you want it to be dimmed or strobed.
"What we're seeing with a lot of the lighting is more of a decor element," says Ryan Kelley, co-owner of Lite Dallas, which has lighted Fort Worth weddings in the Worthington and the Fort Worth Club, as well as weddings at Dallas venues like the W and the Four Seasons Resort.
Kelley says when it comes to lighting a wedding, the three most popular options are room washes, monograms and pin spotting.
A room wash is what it sounds like: a wash of light that adds an elegant or dramatic effect. The wash can be whatever color the couple thinks matches their style and design. It can stay the same throughout the evening, or it can transition color, depending on whether it's boogie time or cake-cutting time.
"You can have an elegant champagne wash when people come in," Kelley says, "but then the first course is served, and the room might go blue."
And if you want to enhance the wash, that's where pin spotting comes in. Ceiling fixtures are used to throw a very focused beam downward onto floral arrangements or centerpieces.
It highlights the arrangement and accentuates it against the colored backwash of the room.
"You're adding depth and dimension to that room," Kelley says.
An average wedding done by Marcus Rollins Entertainment costs $2,000 to $5,000.
"The stuff that gets really crazy is when you're doing several rooms, and you have LED lighting that is changing colors, so you have to program it," Rollins says. "Sometimes you're making every other lighting fixture meld into another color every hour."
A typical wedding for Lite Dallas is in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, Kelley says, adding that $7,000 to $9,000 is not uncommon.
"We had a huge wedding this past October — the largest wedding we've ever done," Kelley says. "The budget for lighting was about $150,000."
A simple crystal chandelier adorned a Zen-like meditation garden, and right up from that was a tiled plaza area where entire floors and all the walls were lit. Initially, as guests walked into the plaza, it was all white with a slight haze effect, so it had a heavenly feel, Kelley recalls of the Dallas wedding, but those walls and floors kept changing colors, wooing future brides all over the city.
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