Wedding Lighting Options At Your Reception
Many people ask what the differences are in lighting packages. I wanted to try and answer most of your questions with this blog post. There are three basic kinds of lighting at a wedding reception. There are dance floor lights, table lighting and architectural lighting of the room.
Dance Floor Lighting:
Basic Dance Floor lighting consists of 2-3 light fixtures that move, change color and shape of the beam based on the music. This is a great way to give some energy to your dance floor.
Club Lighting takes your basic dance floor lighting and brings it to a larger level. We bring more light fixtures. The style and complexity of the fixtures rivals what you’d see in a typical night club. This style lighting creates more of a dance party atmosphere. We can control the lights and adjust them based on fast v. slow music.
Table Illumination:
Table lighting can come in a few typical styles. You can illuminate your tables with candles. You can use LED glow fixtures in vases or in your floral arrangements (talk to your florist about lighting options). You can also pin-spot your table centerpieces. Each table centerpiece would have 1-2 white pin-spots pointed at it from high above (ceiling mounted or 11’ in air well above people) to make your table glow. We can do all guest tables or just your head table, cake table and maybe even your parent’s table. We can even make a table GLOW from underneath.
Architectural Room Lighting or Up-Lighting:
Up-lighting is a huge wedding trend. Something so simple can dramatically change the overall feel of your venue. Dark wood tones? We can warm it up with an Amber LED or Par Can. Want to turn the room blue or pink? We can do that too with our 3 watt LED high intensity LED up-lights (~10,000 lumen output). These up-lights can remain one color through the entire reception or we can wirelessly control color scene changes for your entrance, first dance, or the lights can change based on the music over the course of the evening to add to your party atmosphere.
You can use wash LED lighting OUTSIDE to change a tent or even the ENTRANCE of your venue.
Texture lighting normally requires high vaulted ceilings or tents but can be projected on divider walls, behind your head table or on the ceiling or dance floor to add yet another dimension to your space.
Dance Floor Lighting
Club Lighting
Table Illumination
Architectural Up-Lighting
Texture Lighting
Harkness Memorial – Eolia Mansion in Waterford, CT
If you have never walked through Eolia Mansion in Harkness Memorial park in Waterford, CT - you owe it to yourself to check it out. We have done many wedding ceremony and receptions there and the setting is just amazing!
There is an outdoor stone sunken garden where most people have their ceremonies. There are indoor dining rooms and an outdoor tented stone patio for dancing with a panoramic view of Long Island Sound.
Here a few photos from some of our past weddings
If you would like to have us at your upcoming event or wedding, please checkout our website at www.robalberti.com or request further information and we can check our availability and put together a formal quote for you. CONTACT US NOW FOR FREE INFORMATION.
Remember, we offer wedding disc jockey entertainment, iphotography, photo booth rental, Sweet 16 and Prom DJs, Wedding uplighting, architectural event lighting, up-lighting and a/v rental services including ipod wedding rentals for all types of events in the New England areas including Newport, Providence, Boston, Western Mass, The Berkshires, Hartford, New Haven, CT Shoreline, & Fairfield County.
Check out our other websites: www.audiovideorental.net , www.budgetentertainment.net , www.afterhoursdj.net , www.weddinginsider.net
Copyright 2000-2010 Rob Alberti's Event Services, After Hours DJ, Event Uplighting - All Rights Reserved
Sound Moves In Straight Lines
Sound travels in straight lines – it does not go through walls, around corners or eminate from the back of speakers. Sound will spread from speakers at a fixed angle. That means as a professional wedding entertainer, we need to bring the right style and quantity of speakers to properly obtain adequate sound throughout your wedding venue.
With the use of our wireless speaker technology and the proper placement of sound, we can get an even coverage for just about any room configuration. Outdoor deck for social hour? Is the bqnquet room significantly wider than it is deep? Are guest tables setup BEHIND the DJs speakers? Is there a noticeable echo in the room? Is the room “L” shape, have multiple rooms or are there changes in the ceiling height across the space? All these require more than your average DJ 2-speaker setup. Don’t be fooled when the cost of a more experienced DJ is higher in one venue v. another. They may know about a unique acoustic issue that requires additional gear, personnel or setup time.
We have venues that require us to setup 3-4 wireless speakers to cover all the separate rooms. There are others that are so big that we need to have speakers both in the front of the Dj and in the far corners of the room so everyone can discern the best man’s speech. Have more than 200 guests? We might have to bring in our long throw horn speakers and subwoofers. Maybe only 50 guests? We’ll bring in a system that fits the need every time.
Rob Alberti’s Event Services
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The Log Cabin in Holyoke MA – Corporate Holiday Party – NO HOLIDAY MUSIC
In the quest to be politically correct, one of our clients opts for NO HOLIDAY MUSIC at their holiday party. The Log Cabin in decorated with Christmas Trees and holiday decor, but we cannot play "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". This group is always a fun dancing crowd - maybe it's the lack of holiday music? We brought in a few of our LED up-lights and some of our dance floor lighting for this event.
What is the Difference between one Wedding DJ and the next?
Let’s be serious – not all DJ’s are alike in skill or experience. We’ve all been to a party where the DJ just stunk. It’s not that they sucked – it’s that a bad DJ can “suck” the life out of a party. A great DJ will fan the sparks at an event and create a blaze of good times and good memories.
Sometimes clients get caught up in the numbers – how many years have they been DJing, how many MP3’s do they have in their music library, how many watts of power or how little they charge for their services compared to the next DJ. The number of years DJing doesn’t mean anything if you are still doing the same thing you did 10 years ago. Havening 100,000 MP3’s doesn’t do you any good if you don’t know what to play NEXT to keep the party energized. Finding the least expensive DJ will give you no solace when your guests leave 2 hours early because they cannot get the party going or kepp it going.
You can take the same top-of-the-line gear and the same music collection and have 6 different DJ’s in control and each party will not be the same. I was at this wedding the other day down in CT and got to watch another DJ perform. I was so sorry for the bride and groom after watching this DJ. He did nothing more than play music. The couple’s older guest’s needs were ignored and he played music like he was in a night club. More than half of the guests wer gone an hour into dancing. There were no slow songs for couples to enjoy. There was no variety in his music selection and his transitions between songs were nothing short of atrocious.
A wedding or any other event should flow from moment to moment like a well rehearsed Broadway play. When anything is said over the microphone, there should be a purpose and goal. It should not just be the ranting of a DJ who wants to play a comedian. I watched a band stop the dancing and announce the bouquet toss – the bride was not in the room and there was no bouquet to toss. I have seen events where a packed dance floor was traded for an extended announcement about a desert station. I have watched other area DJs neglect to call the bride and groom by name as they could not remember their names (It was on the dance floor in the LIGHT DESIGN – exactly how can you forget that?) I’ve seen DJs play the same music in the same order from the cocktails hour mix CD all the way through dancing. Would you believe there is a DJ who is SELLING is playlist nationally so that everyone’s wedding is EXACTLY the same.
I say break out of the mold – do your own thing and let’s make your wedding uniquely your own. Let’s make a wedding celebration that you and your guests will be talking about for years to come. Let’s say “No” to cookie cutter weddings and DJs who are more interested in texting on their cell phones than they are with the success (0r failure) of your wedding.
Looking for better than your ordinary DJ, lighting or photo booth? Come take a look and see why we are the most recommended wedding entertainers in New England.
Wedding Coordination and Pacing Of Your Reception – 7 Things your average wedding DJ doesn’t do to guarantee the success of your wedding reception
I want to list the 7 things we routinely do to ensure the success of your wedding reception. I be you’ll be surprised at what a “Rob Alberti’s Event Director and DJ” will do for you on your wedding day.
1. Who makes sure the cake knife is placed, napkins set and a plate and fork are available for your cake cutting?
2. Who ensures your parents are in the room for all your special moments? (toast, cake, dances)
3. Who reminds you to put on your coat before you dance with your mother so that the photos look great?
4. Who keys into the energy of the room over dinner to ensure your guests are not bored? Dinner taking too long? We’ll adjust your timeline on the fly? Who entertains your guests for 5+ hours each ceremony?
5. Who makes sure that you do not get caught up outside or in the hall for extended periods of time and miss your own reception?
6. Who keeps your vision of fun and dancing at the forefront and guides your photographer, videographer and banquet staff to maximize your entertainment time?
7. Who will help design your reception’s flow to avoid awkward moments and keep the pace of your event flowing?
Looking at other entertainment options? We will give you a hint – no band does this for you. No normal wedding planner either. Most other DJs are more interested in the food and when they can pack up and go home. The success (or impending flop) of your reception is in their hands. Do you trust the least expensive DJ to do this for you? Or should you relax and let us take care of it all for you? Isn’t your peace of mind worth a little more than an average DJ. Who wants an “average” wedding? When asked, all brides say they want to have “The Best” wedding. Let us help you create those special moments that will make your wedding celebration shine.
DJ Origins – How Did Rob Alberti Become The Most Requested Wedding DJ In Western MA and Connecticut?
Many people ask how I got into DJing. With any good story, it starts way way back – it was around 1983 and I was attending Southwick High School. I was always actively involved in student government and we found ourselves trying to put on a dance as a fundraiser but we could not afford a band (DJs were pretty scarce back then – equipment was just about non-existent).
I was already a huge music buff and had a big stereo. I figured that if I wired my stereo together to my friend’s stereo, that we could hold our own dance. With a little ingenuity and a lot of sweat, the dance was a success and a light bulb went off in my mind. Why not do this to work my way through college?
I had plans on being a Mechanical Engineer and had been working at a local farm some 48 hours a week for the past 4+ years saving for college. (That’s what kids did back in the day – we saved for college and bought beer with whatever was left over) I thought Djing would be better than flipping burgers trying to put my way through college.
I took a large chunk of the money that I had saved up for college and bought my first set of DJ gear and a used Dodge Van tricked out with blue shag carpeting on the inside. Just about every weekend, I would make the trip from Troy, NY back to Western MA to DJ a school dance, party or bar. These were the vinyl and cassette tape days. You can ask your parents what vinyl was. (A little bigger than a CD and they warped in sunlight)
As my engineering career stared after college, I continued to DJ on the weekends to make some extra $. With layoffs in the early 90’s hitting the aerospace industry hard, I looked at DJing with renewed interest. I decided to stop treating it like a hobby and more like a real business. The business grew and soon I no longer had the time to go to my engineering job. I parted ways to pursue DJing full time about 10 years ago.
With over 15 DJs on staff, we have morphed into one of the largest event service companies in the area. Starting your own business is like having another child – I am proud of all of my children and how they’ve grown over the years. With more than 25 years in business, we look forward to many more fun filled years helping our clients create lasting memories. Thank you & thanks to all of my staff.
The School Street Bistro in Westfield MA – Westfield High Reunion Class of 1991
Reunions are always tough. It's more about setting the tone for the event v. dancing. With a mix of late 80's and early 90's music, we set the tone for this high school reunion. For the first few hours, everyone is interested in talking and catching up with old classmates. The last hour is really when people start dancing. I played some tunes that I have not played in year. Good times.
Class Reunion Top Tips
- Invite teachers!
- On nametags, have the person’s photo from the senior yearbook, so that everyone can identify each other more easily.
- Limit any raffles or speeches to 10 minutes or less (classmates are there to socialize and catch up - not win prizes)
- Make sure someone takes photos (hire a professional or designate someone to be responsible). These photos will come in handy for future gatherings
- Do not limit the music to your high school years. It is a great way to set the tone, but later on - your classmates may not want to relive their Frankie Goes To Hollywood and just may want to get down to LMFAO instead.
- Do not worry about decor or food - station style meal is fine. The food is not the reason they are gathering.
- Make sure there is ample time to socialize - designate an area with lounge furniture or a quiet area
Balise Lexus West Springfield – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Fashion Show
We started with an empty service bay at The Balise Lexus Dealership in West Springfield (see photo below)
With some pipe and drape, staging, chairs, sound and light - we transformed this space into The Girls Just Wanna Have Fun fashion show. Give us a blank slate and it's amazing what you can do. Check out the photos from our completed work.
We brought in over 300 chairs, 40' runway, a couple hundred feet of black pipe and drape, 20 3watt LED par cans, 6 Leko Jr stage lights, 2 Leko 10 degree gobo projectors, podium, pin spots, truss towers, 6 speakers, 2 amplifiers and a whole lot of cables, DMX wireless system and we completely transformed this industrial space. The next time you pull your Lexus in for service, think about what went on in this space with 38 models, 10 scenes, 300+ guests and one rockin' fashion show.
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