Wedding Venue Lighting Gone Wild!

Lighting, when done right, has the magical power to transform our mood.  Fancy restaurants use dimmed and warm lights to put us in a relaxed state so we stay longer and perhaps order that expensive bottle of wine.  Fast food restaurants, on the other hand, use bright fluorescent lights to keep us from feeling too relaxed and staying any longer than we have to.

Wedding venues use uplighting to keep a wedding's color theme consistent, this practice does amazing for photos and video when done right.  However, what prompted me to write this article was an incident that left me in aw as a photographer and a filmmaker.  This was how it all went down.  After the entire bridal party members were introduced at the beginning of the reception, the lovely couple made their way to the dance floor as the DJ screamed their names in excitement.  Without warning, BOOM! a magenta spotlight controlled by the venue's lighting person came on and painted my couple purple!  In photography and cinematography, we strive so hard to keep the skin tones of our subjects as true as possible; I have never met a couple whose true color tone is purple, have you???  After I recovered from the mini heart-attack, I quickly looked around the reception hall for the event manager to shut off the magenta spotlight.  Luckily, the spot light was shut off in time to still capture great photos.

We try to communicate with the venue and DJ so that surprises like these don't happen, but sometimes information don't leak down to the right people and unfortunately it still occurs from time to time.  When a special request is made to the venue and DJ  from the bride/groom themselves, it resonates a bit more.  So help us, discuss lighting with either the venue manager, the DJ, or the coordinator.

The examples below depict ideal lighting condition.