Theatrical Lighting and Uplighting for your Wedding or Special Event

We’ve all seen those ultimate wedding shows. You know the ones where the budget just makes you blink a couple of times. A common theme in most of those high-end weddings is the use of theatrical lighting to create a mood in the venue. Once only reserved for the “platinum wedding” crowd, Theatrical lighting can enhance any event for almost any budget.

Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

 The right lighting will create the right atmosphere and when it’s done well, lighting can make everything, including your flowers, cake, and guests, look better. Lighting can transform a venue. You can take an old church hall or a dated banquet room and completely transform it into a very high-end looking room.

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, MA

 Simple lighting solutions can be quite affordable. If you’re planning an evening reception, make sure to visit your site at least once when it’s dark outside. Look around the room and see where the fixed lighting is focused. Lights that illuminate the walls, windows, and ceiling can draw attention away from the center of the room. You want to keep everyone’s eyes on the tables, dance floor, and each other.

Cambridge Marriott, Boston, MA

You’ll also need to discuss how much electricity your lighting designer is going to need. Your band or DJ will have to have an isolated power source and won’t want to risk tripping a circuit breaker.Ask if the site has dimmers for their overhead lights, and if there’s any fluorescent lighting at all, keep it turned off! Also, make sure there won’t be any service doors kept open, which could flood the space with light and ruin the effect.

Easthampton Room at The Log Cabin, Holyoke, MA

 In order to express your desires to your lighting professional, You’ll need to know a couple of terms which will help to let the designer know what you want.
 A Pin Spot is a fixture that provides a focused beam of light to illuminate an object like a centerpiece or wedding cake.
 A Color Wash is basically a blanket of colored light covering an entire area. This can be accomplished with Uplighting.
 Uplighting is when there are fixtures placed on the floor shooting up on to the wall. Several different types of fixtures can be used to accomplish this effect. Your lighting professional will recommend the right fixture by taking into account power requirements and the type of color saturation desired.
  Gobo projections can include the couple’s monogram or an abstract texture pattern to add interest to a plain wall or ceiling.

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Jim Powers is the CEO of CJC Event Lighting, a professional lighting and production company based in Massachusetts. Jim has over 25 years experience in the wedding industry, and has been heavily involved in Electrical Engineering, Music & Sound Production and Theatrical Lighting for much longer than he would like to admit and his age would suggest.
CJC Event Lighting specializes in Wedding and Event Lighting in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston, and all of New England. CJC Event Lighting transforms your event space using professional theatrical lighting equipment setup and operated by experienced theatrical lighting designers.

Contact Information:
Jim Powers jim@cjceventlighting.com
CJC Event Lighting www.cjceventlighting.com
(413) 737-7555 • (617) 252-8116 • (203) 971-8220

Winter Wonderland Wedding

 Blue and white were the colors we used to create a winter wonderland for this wedding. For the Ceremony at the church, we uplit the walls in blue and spotlighted birch trees with frost gelled white pars. For the Reception, we transformed the Southampton Room at the Log Cabin with blue uplights, and pinspots.

Church

Church

Church

Southampton Room at The Log Cabin

Southampton Room at The Log Cabin

 About the Event Lighting Blog:

Jim Powers is the CEO of CJC Event Lighting, a professional lighting and production company based in Massachusetts. Jim has over 25 years experience in the wedding industry, and has been heavily involved in Electrical Engineering, Music & Sound Production and Theatrical Lighting for much longer than he would like to admit and his age would suggest.
CJC Event Lighting specializes in Wedding and Event Lighting in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston, and all of New England. CJC Event Lighting transforms your event space using professional theatrical lighting equipment setup and operated by experienced theatrical lighting designers.

Contact Information:
Jim Powers jim@cjceventlighting.com
CJC Event Lighting www.cjceventlighting.com
(413) 737-7555 • (617) 252-8116 • (203) 971-8220

A Fall Wedding at the Boston Marriott Longwharf

As an event planning professional with the Springfield Marriott organization, our bride knew just the right vendors to pick to put together an amazing wedding! We worked with the crews from Durocher Florist http://www.durocherflorist.com and Bunnell Photography http://www.bunnellphotography.com for this event and the results were just amazing! This wedding even had a cigar roller during cocktail hour, and a belly dancer!

 The Boston Marriott Longwharf is a very “lighting friendly” venue. Plenty of airwall track and individually controlled power for our pinspot adaptors make lighting this room a pleasure! We used over 30 pinspots connected right to the powered track rails to highlight every guest table and food station! We were able to hang our ellipsoidal fixtures from the airwall track  to produce the stunning wall textures around the room. We uplit with a dark amber and gelled our textures with a lighter amber to create the contrast.

Heather from Durocher Florist provided dramatic tall centerpieces, a seating card “tree”, and some creative, textural bouquets that were absolutely some of the best arrangements we have ever seen!

Kathy from Bunnell Photography did an amazing job capturing the images from this event!

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Jim Powers is the CEO of CJC Event Lighting, a professional lighting and production company based in Massachusetts. Jim has over 25 years experience in the wedding industry, and has been heavily involved in Electrical Engineering, Music & Sound Production and Theatrical Lighting for much longer than he would like to admit and his age would suggest.
CJC Event Lighting specializes in Wedding and Event Lighting in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston, and all of New England. CJC Event Lighting transforms your event space using professional theatrical lighting equipment setup and operated by experienced theatrical lighting designers.

Contact Information:
Jim Powers jim@cjceventlighting.com
CJC Event Lighting www.cjceventlighting.com
(413) 737-7555 • (617) 252-8116 • (203) 971-8220

Mechanics Hall

Mechanics Hall is a great venue in Worcester, MA. We used a bazillion conventional fixtures to properly light this wedding… ok, not a bazillion… around 75. We used Par36s, 38s, 56s and 64s to properly balance the room with the just the right amount of light. We needed to use a couple different flavors of amber gels to compensate for not only bulb wattage, but the different projection surfaces as well. We also used a few of our new 5W Amber LED fixtures and we were able to match the conventional generated amber perfectly. 
The balcony makes a perfect place to mount pinspots to highlight every guest table.
More photos of this one are coming!

Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA

About the Event Lighting Blog:

Jim Powers is the CEO of CJC Event Lighting, a professional lighting and production company based in Massachusetts. Jim has over 25 years experience in the wedding industry, and has been heavily involved in Electrical Engineering, Music & Sound Production and Theatrical Lighting for much longer than he would like to admit and his age would suggest.
CJC Event Lighting specializes in Wedding and Event Lighting in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Boston, and all of New England. CJC Event Lighting transforms your event space using professional theatrical lighting equipment setup and operated by experienced theatrical lighting designers.

Contact Information:
Jim Powers jim@cjceventlighting.com
CJC Event Lighting www.cjceventlighting.com
(413) 737-7555 • (617) 252-8116 • (203) 971-8220

Tent Wedding in Southwick, Massachusetts

When I was first approached by Jason and Beth about lighting a tent for their Wedding in Southwick, Massachusetts, there were more then a few open items. Like color and the size of the tent for instance! But this wedding has raised the bar in our book for a successful back yard (yes,  back yard!!) wedding. The tent was 120 feet by 40 feet and provided by Fantasy Tents of East Longmeadow.  This was one of the largest tents we have worked in and the quality of the tent was amazing!
We washed the ceiling with a light Amber leaf texture and pinspotted the tables for contrast. We also hung a few 24″ white lanterns in the bar tent and on the deck of the home hosting the wedding.
We also had the pleasure of providing lighting for the band Maxxtone. This band rocked the reception and had the dance floor full until… well, whatever time we got out of there. Yes, folks we enjoyed ourselves at this wedding :). The catering was provided by The North Elm Butcher Block of Westfield and the food was amazing! 

Before

 

After

 

Monogram Gobo Projection with Ceiling Texture and Band/Dance Floor Lighting

 

Ceiling Texture and Pinspots

 

Ceiling Texture and Pinspots

 

Lanterns in Bar Tent

 

Just a cool overall shot... Shoulda used a tripod!

Colormaker wireless battery operated LED fixtures available at CJC Event Lighting

CJC Event Lighting announces the availability of Colormaker LED fixtures to augment  it’s arsenal of available professional lighting equipment. These units feature  a small LED panel, a 10 hour battery life and wireless color control. Perfect for the small area without access to power that needs uplighting, these units also feature wireless control of the color output.    

CJC_Colormaker

 

Colormaker uplighting a column

 

Uplighting a column wirelessly

Mohegan Sun

Uplighting the Uncasville ballroom at the Mohegan Sun Casino takes a little bit of doing!  We used our 1 meter LED Bars to uplight the traditional indian decor sconces and pinspotted the Cake table, Head Table and selected guest tables. We also provided a subtle texture to hide the massive airwall that divided the 40,000 square foot ballroom into the more manageable Salon A ! 

Before

 

After

 

Uplit and Textured Airwall behind candle display

 

Pinspotted Centerpiece

 

Pinspotted Cake with uplit Sconce

 

Uplit Sconce

 

Pinspotted Centerpieces with Uplighting

Tommy and Laura at The Log Cabin

The recent wedding of Tommy and Laura Plante at The Log Cabin included many of our wedding vendor friends. It’s only right that the owner of Hard at Play DJ service had one of the most well planned and elegant weddings we’ve lit this year!
We uplit the perimeter of the ballroom with shades of Lipstick and slowly transformed the color to Spice over the course of the evening and added accents of Amber to the airwall. We pinspotted the table arrangements from Durocher Florist, the cake from Cerrato’s Bakery, and the head table.
Joining us that evening were Seth Kaye Photography, Steven Fowler Films, CT Party Photos, and DJ Rob Alberti.

Pinspotted Centerpieces with Uplighting

Overall Room

Pinspotted Cake

Amber uplights behind a pinspotted centerpiece

Amber uplights behind the Sweetheart table

Lipstick and Spice custom programmed LED uplights

Villa Rosa, Waterbury, CT

This was our first visit to Villa Rosa in Waterbury CT. This facility has 24 faux columns surrounding the perimeter of the ballroom. We uplit each one with our LED pars and added a few LED bars to highlight the draping along a row of windows. We also provided pinspotting, and a monogram gobo projection on the airwall with a complementing amber texture background. We also projected another monogram gobo onto the floor in the foyer to be seen as guests were leaving. We had the pleasure of working with DJ Rocco, Schaler Photography and Myers Video Productions for this wedding!  

Uplighting By the Cake Table

 

Pinspotting

 

Gobo with additional texture wash

 

Monogram Gobo on the floor in the foyer

Three Weddings and a Lighting Design!

The Hunnewell Building on the grounds of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Elm Bank, is one of our favorite venues to light. There is plenty of power, a high ceiling, and a big white empty room to work with! Our latest project there were 3 weddings in one weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday). The 3 couples and their families collaborated with us and the result was a medium amber conventional uplighting scheme with a lighter complementing texture gobo wash on the ceiling of the main building. We also uplit the attached tent (and a second tent added for the first wedding)  and hung 2 dozen illuminated white lanterns to add scale to the tent. Each wedding used the different parts of the building for different purposes, and we were able to adjust the design quickly to fit each couples needs. All 3 weddings were able to share the cost of the basic lighting package and  were able to add additional items for thier event. For the second wedding, we provided wireless mics and sound for the ceremony and for the reception supported a Jazz trio with a full sound system in the main room and provided a satellite speaker system and feed into the tent.
The third wedding moved the dance floor into the tent so we dimmed the lanterns and uplights to create a romantic atmosphere as the night progressed.