UPLIGHTING: the hottest trend for weddings.

You are blissfully in love and savoring the engaged. Now it is time to start planning the wedding. There is just so much to do and so much to learn.

In this article we will be addressing uplighting, an area of event planning that you will find of necessary especially as it relate to evening wedding reception. Uplighting is an easy way to set the set the mood and transform a venue for a weddings or a special event.

So what is uplighting you may be wondering?

“Uplights” are small lighting units placed on the floor around the outer limits of your venue. The colored lights illuminate the walls from floor to ceiling.

Event lighting is come a far way. Traditional wedding lighting involved the use of heavy par cans with halogen light bulbs.  A single color gel was placed over the top of the light bulbs for color.  These par cans took up a lot of space, are heavy, and the lights get extremely hot.  You also have to put a color gel over each light, and purchase different gels for different colors. Due to the fire safety concerns and the need to conserve more energy the Traditional Par Can Uplights uplighting is fading.

 LED Uplights
Trending in wedding lighting now is the Light Emitting Diode (LED).  The LED lights weight as they are 3 pound each and measures 6” wide and 3” thick. LED uplights is very compact and powerful and will illuminate a wall from floor to ceiling. You can set the uplights to almost any shade of any color.

Benefits of the LED Uplighting

• Color changes based on a timer,
• Color changes to the beat of music.
• Low energy consumption

LED uplights is that they are Very low energy, will not blow electrical fuses.  75 LED uplights use the same energy as a regular hair dryer

 GOBO / MONOGRAM: the hottest trend for weddings.

What is a Gobo?
Another hot trending weddings and special events is gobo projector or monogram lighting.  Gobo stands for “Goes before Optics is an image that is projected onto a wall or dance floor, usually displaying the names of a bridal couple, wedding date, or monogram.   A gobo is a disc that light shines through to project an image onto any surface using a special gobo projector.

LED gobo projectors use LED lights, which produce an optimal image while using less energy than a standard light.  Gobos can be made of a variety of materials, including transparency (plastic), steel, and glass.  The quality of the projected image varies based upon the type of material used for the gobo.

Things to know about Gobo

The image quality will also depend on the surface on which it is being projected.  For example, a gobo projected on a white wall will appear extremely bright, while a gobo projected on a dark wood dance floor will not appear quite as bright. Transparency Gobo Allow more intricate design options.

There are three tricks to making the haziness imperfections less visible:

1. Projecting the gobo onto a patterned or textured surface like a dance floor
2. Pairing the gobo with uplighting, and applying a colour filter
3. Place a colour filter disc over the gobo disc, and then insert the two discs into the gobo projector. A color filter is simply a thin disc made of color plastic.

If you rent a gobo projector, you don’t need to worry about all these technical details.  The projector will be pre-loaded with your gobo design, and all you need to do is plug it in and point it to the surface you want.