There are no two ways about it; weddings are significant events. Whether you have hundreds of attendees or just a few specially selected guests, they are momentous occasions. For most of you, it's something you'll only get to experience once, which is why you'll want to get it right. A lot of your satisfaction the day will depend on the outcome of your wedding production team.
You may not be aware of this fact at this moment in time, but without a wedding production company, you won't have much of a wedding. Confused? Don't worry; we're about to explain everything you need to know about wedding production, after which you'll soon realise it's importance to your big day.
What is Wedding Production?
If you're still none the wiser with the term wedding production, it's useful to think of your wedding as more of a stage or film production than a celebration. When you pause to think about it, you'll realise the requirements are almost identical.
You're going to need to hire professional sound and lighting equipment for your DJ/live band, and you'll likely need a professionally-erected stage, not to mention a dancefloor. You might also need a PA system and a mic for your master of ceremonies, whomever that may be. You may even stretch to include "set props" as it were, such as temporary staircases or a stretch of red carpet.
Hopefully, you're now beginning to realise that wedding production is a vital component of a successful celebration. In short, it covers almost anything that isn't style-related, such as flowers or table decorations. You may be thinking, "I don't need that much production for my wedding." But when you start to consider the items you need to hire for your wedding, it'll soon become apparent just how much you need to rely on event production services.
With that in mind, let's delve a little deeper into what you might need for your special occasion, starting with the lighting.
Wedding Production – The Lighting
We could go on all day about wedding lighting as a subject in its own right. In fact, we already have, so when you're finished reading this post, you may want to head over to our complete guide to wedding lighting hire. However, without getting into too many specifics, it's essential to highlight the less thought about influences that lighting has on your wedding.
There are many scenarios where excellent lighting makes all the difference, and yet they often aren't considered until it's too late. For instance, take the venue as a starting point. Outdoor venues aside, many brides and grooms don't give too much thought to wedding lighting hire because the site has its own lighting arrangements. But frequently that lighting is merely conventional and not conducive to the mood and ambience you're trying to create.
By contrast, LED uplighters can completely alter the look of a venue (and even change its colour) for a minimal outlay. Pin spots on the tables can also enhance the blooms and decorations adorning your tables. These additions are not necessarily considerations that immediately spring to mind when you agree to tie the knot. However, you'll notice if they're not there.
Skipping over the apparent need to hire lighting to live music acts and DJs that don't include lighting as part of their wedding package, there's another critical role lighting plays during your celebration, and that's your photography.
Even the most skilled photographers and videographers can only do so much in low lighting or colour-washed conditions. Modern flash technology can compensate to a certain extent, but colour-washing a room can have a detrimental effect on your photography output. Getting the lighting right (through consultation with your photographer) can make an enormous difference to that all-important wedding video and photo album.
Wedding Production – The Sound
Sounds are almost as crucial as your lighting arrangements. From ensuring everyone can hear proceedings during the ceremony, to giving the live band the oomph they need to get the party started in earnest, you need to hire sound equipment up to the task.
When it comes to sound requirements, they are often more varied than lighting because your venue traditionally provides less. For instance, it's pretty typical to need radio microphones, a PA system, sound monitors, amps, and a mixing desk for even the subtlest of celebrations.
If you want something a little eccentric, then there's the added requirement for sound engineers to run equipment such as mixing desks properly. With experienced sound personnel in place, you can avoid those instances of terrible screeching feedback from an amp midway through a live band's performance, sending everyone scurrying back to the safety of the bar.
While some bands and DJs are proficient with basic sound setups, you'll find that they will struggle with more complex arrangements without the help of expert production teams. Thus, it's wise to start planning your sound requirements as soon as you've booked the respective venues.
Wedding Production – Everything Else
Even though wedding lighting and sound hire may be your primary concerns, you need to refer back to the opening of this piece. Remember, anything that is technical in nature comes under the umbrella of wedding production.
Relatively high on the list of those types of services is stage hire. Customary for any band or DJ, a stage helps to bring a focal point to your celebrations. Fortunately, as a company that also provides stages to huge events such as festivals, fashion events, and award ceremonies, we're pretty well-versed in delivering all manner of staging to our wedding clients.
A request we continue to receive for more extravagant weddings is for either custom or tiered staging, complete with bespoke lighting trusses. As mentioned, we're pretty experienced in this specific department. Therefore, we can pretty much build anything you desire, provided you give us the required lead-time to assemble it.
But we can provide other supplementary wedding production elements too. Staircases, red carpets, catwalks, LED screens and elevated walkways are all no problem for a wedding production company such as On Tour Events.
As highlighted above, as these components of event production services are frequently bespoke, you'll need to give companies such as ourselves plenty of notice. This is especially true if you want some input regarding the design phase. Once you've agreed on the proposed structure, don't to forget to factor in manufacturing and assembly timelines.
Why it Always Makes Sense to Hire Just One Wedding Production Company
Weddings are stressful enough to organise. So why would you make it more difficult by enlisting the services of numerous suppliers of lighting, sound and staging equipment, when some operators provide everything you need under one roof?
There are numerous benefits attached to hiring a single company. First and foremost, everything during the planning stage goes through one contact. You could have six or seven elements handled by one liaison, who then organises everything for you from there onwards.
You've got to organise the dresses, suits, cake, invitations, entertainment, transportation, lodging, and the venue, to name but a few. Thus, it doesn't make sense not to delegate anything related to production to one outfit.
Next, there's the added benefit of cohesion when it comes to set up on the big day itself. Several different suppliers working on similar elements is challenging, to say the least. You don't want a situation whereby the sound guys are harassing the lighting guys to finish set up, who themselves are waiting for the staging team to complete construction after they got caught up in London traffic, knocking everybody's timings off.
It just doesn't make sense. Everything runs much smoother from a production standpoint if one team is handling everything from start to finish. That way, if there are any unexpected hiccups at the venue, they aren't quite so disastrous, and every member of the production team is singing from the same hymn sheet.
Speaking of Wedding Production Teams, Are They Included Within the Price?
While we can't speak to other wedding production companies, here at On Tour Events, they are indeed included. Many companies charge extra for production services during your event, but with many of our "off the shelf" weddings and events packages we provide functions such as stage monitoring for live bands as part of the service.
While you may not require the expertise of a sound engineer or a lighting technician for a small wedding with a limited number of guests, if you're expecting more than 100 attendees during your evening entertainment segment, then you'll likely need professional help with the audio visual equipment.
You'll notice that the more expensive the live band, the more they expect you to provide. Even if they do offer sound and lighting services as an extra, they're likely using a third party anyway. Thus, it makes to choose a provider already on-site with a proven track record in the industry.
You Mentioned "Off the Shelf" Wedding Production Packages? What Are These?
We've been in the wedding and events industry a really long time. Not only does that give us unrivalled experience in delivering services that continue to "wow" our clients, but it also means we probably know what you're looking for more than you do when it comes to your wedding production.
Let's be honest here; unless you work in the industry yourself, you're unlikely to know the answer to any of our technical questions anyway. For example, do you know what the key differences are between monitors and speakers? Or perhaps the difference between festoon and pendant lighting?
If not, (don't worry, most people don't) it's best to let us listen carefully to your plans, before coming up with a package that presents a perfect fit for your needs. We pride ourselves on being able to interpret your desires and respond with a variety of all-in-one packages explained in layman terms that you have no trouble understanding.
With an "off the shelf" package, you will receive everything you require for one price. No surprises, no supplements or extras. Just one flat fee for all of your wedding event production services.
Where Can On Tour Events Provide Wedding Production Services?
On Tour Events has three separate office locations and two warehouse locations. Our main office and warehouse is in London, our second office is in Surrey, and we have a third office paired with a warehouse in Manchester. Given our geographical spread, we can provide our services to pretty much anywhere in the UK, but we primarily operate in London and the surrounding areas.
However, don't despair if you're getting married on the continent since we provide our event production services across Europe too. In fact, we spent a large slice of 2018 in Portugal. We also regularly deliver our event production services for a corporate client of ours in Germany, and we recently took a four-month tour around France with our equipment.
Should you wish, you can come and meet us in person to discuss your ideas and inspect our equipment. We operate an appointment-only system as we are often off-site preparing for client events. If you would like to meet up to have a chat about your upcoming wedding, please feel free to get in contact using the information listed below to arrange a time slot that's convenient for you.
On Tour Events: Technical Audio Visual Event Services London
OFFICE & WAREHOUSE:
+PHONE: 020 8058 0093
+MONDAY - FRIDAY 08:00 - 20:00
+EMAIL: INFO@ONTOUREVENTS.CO.UK
+POST: Office 108 Belgrove House Belgrove Street, London, WC1H8AA
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