battery uplighting

Wedding Lighting at Molan Lave Vineyard in Warrenton, VA

March 10, 2014 By Brian King Leave a Comment

Bride and groom dancing with their wedding monogram and uplighting behind them.

A high arched ceiling and simple walls are pretty plain for a wedding. Brighten the walls and the room and pull together your color by renting wireless uplighting and a rental monogram light.

A lot of venues like vineyards are amazing outdoors and offer a great cocktail hour experience but their reception spaces can be somewhat plain. Lighting is the lowest cost option to transform the space for your wedding and make it completely personalized.

Simple walls are enhanced with a monogram and a purple uplighting.

Even with daylight in the room the uplights did a great job pulling together the bride and groom’s colors and creating the perfect ambiance for their wedding.

Venue: Molan Lave Vineyards – Warrenton, VA
Entertainment: Wedding DJ & Ceremony – Superlative Events

Will Uplighting Work in a Room With Windows & Natural Light?

March 4, 2014 By Brian King Leave a Comment

Light Blue Uplighting at Evergreen Country Club in Haymarket, Virginia — Uplighting works well even when there are windows letting light into the event space.

Q: The space we are using has a lot of windows, will uplighting look good even with all of the windows and the daylight coming in the room?

A: Uplighting works well even when there are windows and daylight in the space. Using uplighting with natural light can create some really elegant lighting effects.

When you are uplighting with natural light, think about the timeline for the event. Most events start with cocktails earlier where having a less saturated lighting look is an elegant touch. As the evening progresses through dinner the sun sets and less natural light is coming into the room, the effect of the uplighting is enhanced.

Evergreen Country Club Haymarket, VA Wedding Reception Lighting — The effect of uplighting naturally grows stronger as the evening progresses and as the natural daylight in the room fades.

When dinner is over it will naturally feel like the room has been slowly transformed with the natural light leaving the space and the uplighting taking over. This transitions really well for dancing and the rest of the evening.

Venue: Evergreen Country Club – Haymarket, VA

Quinceañera Lighting Rentals

February 25, 2014 By Brian King Leave a Comment

Quincea?era birthday girl — Lighting is a great way to make a quinceañera truly memorable.

Celebrating a quinceañera is a huge milestone in a young woman’s life when she turns 15. One of the most cost effective way’s to decorate for party is with lighting. Lighting can literally transform a boring event space into something truly magical.

Some of the best lighting elements to use for a quince años are:

Monogram / Gobo Lighting
Uplighting
Blisslights
Cake Spotlights

Quinceañera Monogram Lighting

Quincea?era gobo and monogram samples — Quinceañera monograms, perfect for personalizing Mis Quince Años party.

Choose from our library of designs to create a unique design for your quinceañera. If you don’t see a design you like we can work with a design you already have or create a completely new design. The lights are really easy to setup and are perfect for creating a strong focal point in your event space.

You can also create “figuras en el cielo” effect by projecting patterns from the party on the ceiling or on the walls of your venue. You would just need to send us the patterns or textures your would like to use.

Rent Uplights for a Quinceañera

Wireless uplighting is the easiest way to add color and ambiance to your party. Enhance your quince’s color palette and add instant visual appeal and elegance to your space.

Uplights have a wireless controller so you can have the lights change to the music, fade through colors for slow dances and transform a boring room into a party in less than 3 minutes! You can have your entire event space setup and set to the color(s) you want.

See more on how you can rent uplighting and transform your quinceañera.

bliss-light-rental-50-cheap — Dance under the stars with our blisslight rental packages.

Rent a Starry Sky Effect for a Quinceañera

The Blisslight creates 1000’s of pinpoints of light that look like stars that slowly move towards and away from eachother creating a slow-moving starry night?effect. Behind the stars, the light produces a blue/purple nebula that slowly moves, creating a captivating 3-D effect. The perfect effect for creating the feeling of dancing under the stars. Make your father daughter dance magical by dancing under the stars of a blisslight. Rent a blisslight today and see how you can dance under the stars for your quinceañera.

Quinceañera Cake Spotlights

A cake spotlight is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to illuminate one of the biggest focal points of your Quince!

The average cost of a cake is $500!!!

Let one of the most expensive decor items you’ll have at the party shine with the cake spotlight package.

Your completely wireless cake spotlight package illuminates your cake for all your guests to enjoy. Your cake spotlight is actually a mix of three separate lights so the cake looks amazing from every angle, in any venue.

Learn more about renting a cake spotlight.

Rent Lighting for Your Quinceanera Today!

Remember, decorations you have at your Quince won’t be able to be seen without lighting. Renting DIY lighting for your quinceanera will help you save money and enhance all the other decorations you’ve put together for one of the most important days of your life. Contact us today to see how we can help you transform your party!

How Can I Transform a Hotel Ballroom With Lighting?

February 6, 2014 By Brian King Leave a Comment

First dance at a wedding reston hyatt regency with uplighting. — First dance with uplighting, tree candles, and texture lighting.

Hotel ballrooms are designed to hold business meetings, weddings, corporate holiday parties, conferences, and any other number of events. Hotel ballrooms aren’t designed to look amazing for every event, they are designed to be nice enough to not notice the room itself.

Or you might have the opposite end of the spectrum with the hotel that went headstrong into branding the room with a very specific design style that most likely does not fit your event decor (we’re looking at you kaleidoscope carpet Marriott’s). That’s where the lighting comes in.

DIY, Outside Vendor, Hotel’s Vendors?

You have three options when considering lighting for your event. The most cost effective is DIY, using outside vendors is generally next expensive, or you can use the hotel’s recommended lighting vendor.

DIY lighting can be easy to transform a ballroom if you have the time and people to do it.

Leveraged DIY is an option that people don’t always consider. Use another one of your vendors, florist, planner, DJ, drape company to setup the lighting for you. They will already be there at your event and you can save on the labor costs that way. We’re more than happy to work with them so that you get the effect that you are looking for.

Outside vendors are usually the next best cost effective option. Expect to pay a premium for having someone come out, set up the lighting, come up with the lighting design, and make sure everything runs smoothly. Weddingwire.com is a great resource for finding lighting vendors and we usually send people there when looking for a vendor in their area.

reston hyatt before and after wedding lighting — Hotel ballroom before and after lighting.

Hotel lighting can be a very expensive endeavor. Not only do you have to pay for the lighting company, but you pay for the lighting company to rent space at the hotel to house their equipment, you pay for the hotel management, you pay a fee for having the hotel recommend the lighting to you, and you pay service charges on all of that. Hospitality speak it’s what ever the cost is plus plus.

From our price comparisons you’ll end up paying about a 35% to 55% premium to have the hotel provide lighting or A/V services for your event.

What Lighting Do I Need?

before and after lighting in smaller hotel ballroom — Before and after lighting in a smaller hotel ballroom.

By the time you are done planning your event you’ll be an expert in lighting. A good place to start is this article types of event lighting?that walks you through each step of types of lighting and what it creates.

Think of lighting as a way to enhance the features and design elements in your space and deemphasize elements that you don’t like. Hate the carpet and chairs? Use uplighting to draw guests eyes up and use texture lighting to add interest higher up on the walls so guests won’t notice the carpet or chairs. Then use candles or centerpiece lighting on tables to add extra light to each of the tables and draw guests eyes away from the elements you don’t like.

Find out how many uplights you’ll need?using our online uplighting calculators.

What Can Lighting Do?

Lighting can go a long ways to change elements of the room that can be very expensive to otherwise fix. Some elements it can fix are:

Big Space – Hotel ballrooms are notoriously large and cavernous devoid of feeling. Lighting helps warm the cold space up and helps make it more inviting.
Boring Walls / Air Walls – Airwalls and boring walls are perfect for texture lighting. Create the pattern and design that matches your other decorations on your walls with light.
Carpet – The entire floor is covered in it, uplights can fix them by bringing peoples eyes higher or changing the color of the carpet completely.
Chairs – Chiavari or similar replacement chairs can cost an extra $50-$100 per table, use uplighting at less than half the cost.
Dark Room – Sometimes venues are just dark. Lighting brightens up the space and makes it feel more warm and elegant.
Linens – Upgraded linens can cost $30-$120 per table, use uplighting to impart color and shimmer to standard white or cream colored linens.
Low Ceilings – Smaller ballrooms feel more like dungeons than ballrooms. Use uplighting’s vertical lines to make the room feel bigger and taller. Use a blisslight on the ceiling to make it feel more expansive and taller. Pin-spot centerpieces to make it feel more dimensional.
Ugly Art Filled Walls – Use light to control what people see. Cake spotlights, pin-spotlights, table spotlights can all redirect what people see and what they don’t see.
Terrible Lighting – Fluorescent lights are ugly. They make people look ugly, they make the venue look ugly, and otherwise are terrible light sources. Bringing in lighting will let you fix the bad lighting in a space.
Wall Color – Uplights can change the colors of any wall in an event space at the touch of a button.

cake spotlight with purple uplighting — W Hotel uplighting, pin-spots and cake spotlight at a wedding in Washington, DC.

Lighting can make a big huge difference in the look of your event space and is one of the most cost effective ways to transform the room. After all, no one can see your other decor elements if they are in the dark.

Transform Your Event

Whether your budget is $50, $500, or $5,000 we can help you find a cost effective way to light up your event and save money in the process. Check out all the diy lighting rentals we offer and what you can do to transform your event.

We’d love to hear what you think, leave your feedback, questions, or comments below.

Denim & Diamonds Party Lighting – Howard University Blackburn Center

December 3, 2013 By Brian King Leave a Comment

western gobo light denim and diamonds party blackburn center DC — Custom Denim and Diamonds Gobo with blue and white uplighting at Howard University’s Blackburn Center

This features event lighting from Moorean’s birthday party at Howard University at the Blackburn Center. We’ve done events at the Blackburn Center before and knew that the room had tall ceilings, terrible room lighting with no control, and a massive air wall that most of our clients hate with a passion!

Moorean had a Denim and Diamonds theme to the party and incorporated a western type of feel throughout their decor elements including a live gold cowboy statue, denim and western attire, and western themed drinks and food.

Howard University Blackburn Center Airwall with Gobo lighting of stars and a saloon sign — We transformed the air wall with gobo lighting of a starry night sky and a custom saloon sign above the 16ft bar.

To fix the issues with the space we set them up with our wireless uplighting and used two colors, white and blue to bring light into the space so we could turn off the overhead lights. This bathed the room in a blue and white light that was much better than the florescent-terrible-undimmable overhead lighting. They were going to have a cake so our cake spotlight package was an easy option to really showcase the cake.

before photo of event lighting — Before photos of Howard University’s Blackburn Center, terrible overhead lights are not good for parties.

The massive air wall is always a problem in this room. They have such a cool effect with the large exposed brick walls inside and then ruin it with a massive 70’sesque air wall. We transformed the air wall into a sign above the bar with a western starry sky feel and a custom designed MoMo’s Saloon sign. This created a focal point around the 16ft bar in the room and let people know exactly where the drinks were. Every western town has a bar and needs a bar/saloon. These lights transformed the air wall into the starry sky with a personalized saloon sign. We also created a denim jean pocket encrusted with diamond rivets to personalize the space for Moorean’s Denim & Diamonds party. Our gobo lights are perfect for customizing and personalizing any large event space.

Before event lighting photo blackburn center — Before photo of the Blackburn Center

The overall effect really transformed the room and you can tell by the before and afters that it really made a huge difference in the space.

With our rental lights it’s easy to get the effect you want for a fraction of the price of hiring an outside company to do it. Check out our event lighting rental pricing to see how much you can save today!

Venue: Howard University Blackburn Center
Lighting: Superlative Events

We are so grateful to work with awesome people like Moorean, here’s what she had to say about the event.

[quote style=”boxed”]”You transformed that dingy, dinky place into a gorgeous western scene. I told your brother that you guys were just “showing off”! Seriously, I am more than pleased with everything. A worker there told me that he has worked there for 34 years and that room had never, ever been transformed to that magnitude.! That partition “popped”! The gobos were awesome! The uplighting was eloquent and breathtaking. Again, what can I say, but thank you, thank you and thank you.” – Moorean Baker[/quote]