Weddingbee Blog

Our reception venue is a gigantic white ballroom. It is 11,644 square feet of white, open space. One of our biggest obstacles throughout wedding planning has been finding ways to make this huge room feel more intimate while infusing color and personality into the room.

Here are some images of how our venue can be transformed with the addition of some fancy lighting:

You hardly notice the awful chairs! Hardly.

This is the image that convinced us to have lighting.

Above images and lighting by Premier Productions

We talked to a few vendors that quoted us astronomical prices for lighting our reception space. One place said we would need 50–60 lights at a cost of $250 for four (FOUR!) lights. That would be almost four grand for lighting. Hellz no. After these discussions, I was pretty much resigned to the fact that uplighting would be a luxury we simply could not afford at our wedding.

And then we found the uplighting angel (AKA our DJ).

At our initial meeting, our DJ not only quoted us an amount that was thousands cheaper than other companies, but because we wanted to rent so many lights, he also gave us a deep discount on our lights. *Cue the choir* We signed the contract immediately, and I had to pinch myself to believe our good fortune. We asked for 30 lights for the low price of—wait for it—only $10 a light. (I know, I am super lucky.)

But, now that have booked lighting for our wedding…we need to decide what color should be lighting up our wedding reception.

As discussed (ad nauseam), our colors are red, green, and gray with some white thrown in there for good measure.

We could go with green lighting:

Photo and lighting by Blaster’s Entertainment

Photo and lighting by KC Mobile Pros

Green is my favorite color…BUT I’m afraid that a room full of green uplighting will look like an alien landing is about to occur in our reception venue. I think the light green lighting in the second picture is less alien attack, and more of the soft, elegant look we are going for.

We could play up the red in our color scheme:

Photo and lighting by Premier Wedding DJ

I think the above image is gorgeous and looks very elegant. But, red can be overdone very easily. You see, in college, I painted my tiny 10’ x 10’ room red. Bright red. On all four walls. You could literally see my room glowing from the street. My roommates (appropriately) called it the hell room. If we choose to feature red on the walls, we will need to be careful not to overdo it and make our guests feel as if they entered the underworld.

Or we could do simple, white lighting:

Photo and lighting by Elite Entertainment

I love how the white lighting looks so sophisticated when paired with the candlelight in this room. But, wouldn’t white lighting defeat the purpose of spending money on uplighting? Given that one of the reasons for including lighting is to infuse some color into our reception space, using white lighting seems like a wasted opportunity. I love the look in this picture because it emphasizes the color on the wall, but the effect would be lost on our all white room.

I’m at a loss. Thankfully we have some time to decide which color we want to incorporate into our reception venue.

What color do you suggest? Or would you go with a mix of colors?