Uplighting for Wedding: Things You Need to Know
Organizing a wedding includes a lot of things to consider and do – so much so that it can be very stressful for some people, especially when the wedding is larger and with more guests. What catches a lot of people by surprise, however, aren’t the well-known parts of weddings such as the reception, the dinner, and the DJ but the smaller side things they haven’t thought about such as uplighting.
Uplighting weddings is a simple thing in principle but it does have its tricks and subtleties. A type of light decoration for weddings, uplighting should be done carefully and mindfully.
What is uplighting for weddings?
Whether we’re talking about full wedding reception uplighting or localized uplighting around certain areas, this is the practice of placing lighting units on the floor facing up. Uplighting is done either when there are insufficient lighting sources or, more commonly, just to add some extra atmosphere to the venue.
How much is uplighting for a wedding when done by professionals?
Depending on where the venue is taking place, how much lights you’re going to need, what type of lights, and who you are renting them from, professional uplighting can cost anywhere from several hundred dollars for a dozen lights or more to over a thousand dollars for 3-4 lights.
A lot of the more expensive options will justify their prices by saying that they know how to utilize uplighting for the best possible results. And while that’s true, uplighting can either look tremendously or laughably bad, if the cost reaches 4 digits you’re likely overpaying.
How many uplights do I need for a wedding?
This depends entirely on the venue and on your preferences. Many venues can work great with just several uplighting fixtures – a one behind the cake table, one behind the main table, one near the DJ or the band, and one or two elsewhere around the venue.
Other venues, however, are either bigger or more poorly lit and need more uplighting fixtures to look well.
DIY uplighting wedding – is it a good idea?
If you don’t want to hire someone to do your uplighting for hundreds or thousands of dollars you can try doing it yourself. All you’ll need is to either have or rent affordable LED floor lights that you can place strategically around the venue. You can use outdoor flood lights too as long as they can work with the venue and won’t be too bright.
Alternatively, you can rent uplights too – there are services online which allow people to rent their LED uplights for as little as $17 per light and per day. After that, all you need to do is figure out how many lights your venue needs, what colors, and where to place them.
