Weddings are meant to be stress free and enjoyable, especially for the couple getting married. The one thing which is going to determine your choice of a supplier is, if you feel comfortable they are reliable enough to turn up on the day and do what is promised. Absolutely price comes into it, as well as what experience and technical services the wedding event company offer, but we do believe that it comes down to trust. If you do not trust the company you are going with, whether they are the most expensive or the cheapest it will not work. Trust is key to a successful customer-supplier relationship.
We have a long-standing reputation as a trusted reliable professional audio visual company and having worked on thousands of events over the years, we totally understand a wedding is very special to the happy couple but also an event to look forward to by their chosen wedding guests. The most important aspect being the marriage itself, but secondly to that the production side whether that is stage, sound or lights, each play a big part in the overall experience of the wedding. When you have booked entertainers such as live acts or DJs you want your wedding to feel lavish, unique & individual to you & your partner. You want your guests & close family to walk away remembering first and foremost obviously the marriage, but also the experience of the whole event from start to finish. Where we come in is generally towards the end of the day and this is where we excel.
Here is a quick overview of a situation which occurred in late summer 2019, for a couple who were due to get married in the Algarve, Portugal. Although there was no issue with the marriage itself, the couple were finding it extremely difficult to not only find a local supplier but to find a reliable one. It took 2-3 weeks to receive a quote and when they finally did hear back from several companies the resounding response was ‘unable to assist with supplying the equipment.’ The couple approached us just 8 days prior to the wedding asking if we could not only do a site visit but also somehow get the equipment there and assist with supplying our services for their wedding. Bearing in mind this would be to a venue we had never been to before and would probably only see once, work with a band we had never worked with before who all spoke Portuguese (special thanks to Google Translate here) with lots of other unknowns, all this during Brexit! Well we were excited by the prospect of getting this turned around so quickly and said we would have a look and get back to them in 24-hours, which is what we did.
What happened next was quite amazing...
Within 48 hours we were standing at the hotel, which was the Tivoli in Vilamoura, a 5-star wedding venue with the capability of holding 1000 guests in its outside arena. With rigging and power all sorted in house by the hotel, we were to provide stage, sound, lighting, and LED screen for the wedding. The design needed to be compact due to travel restrictions. The only way to get it there and built on time was to send three 5.5t vans with 3 drivers allowing for overnight stops. Everything needed to be built and tested at the warehouse beforehand making sure we had plenty of spares as there was no way of getting anything locally, so we factored in an additional 10% of cable and infrastructure to allow for the complete unknown on the day. This is often the case when working abroad, as many other production companies will know.
We supplied a three tiered 6 meter wide x 4 meter deep white wedding stage, finished off with 2 x custom made white perspex plinths which had the couples initials engraved. These were highlighted with tungsten glowing strips, giving them a modern vintage feel.
Lighting wise we added 8 x Portman P1 lights positioned in front of the 15 square meter LED screen we supplied, which really set off the stage. The video screen was used to display footage of the couples nine month period travelling around the world, which they had not long got back from only 3 months ago. We then used 8 x white moving head fixtures for eye candy, these worked perfectly for during the day and we finished the look off with 16 x Robe Pointe’s which were installed into the roof across 24m of truss! All rigging was taken care of by Raw Rigging, Faro. We controlled the lighting using a Chamsys MQ80, which is very compact with amazing capability.
Front of house PA system turned out to be 4 x d&b Y-subs, 2 x d&b Y7P point source boxes and M4's on the stage with additional wireless Shure IEM's. The desk we used was the trusted Midas Pro2C, this is a small, compact, reliable desk, plus we also took an additional Midas M32R+DL32 just in case! Trying to mix a band without a mixing desk is in an impossible task.
Please also bear in mind the temperature outside the venue was over 40 degrees due to an unexpected heat wave and air conditioning can only help to a certain extent. It does not completely cool you down when you are lifting & building stages!
The final elements for the production were installed overnight to allow us to be ready for a 9am sound check with the band. Once that had been completed, we were asked to be back at the hotel for 13:00 and continued throughout the day into the early hours until the finale at 4am! The turnaround was tight due to another wedding booked in the following day, so we had to de rig and be out by 10am. We would be lying if we said this was not tiring and challenging, not to mention a very quick turnaround, overseas within a few days of the initial contact! However, we can honestly say the couple were so lovely and over the moon with the final production, set in a beautiful location we were delighted to have been part of their special day.
If your planning an event & your looking to hire stage, lighting, sound or LED screen & your wanting to work new a new, creative event production company then we would love to hear from you. Below is the your find all our contact details with all the links to our social media pages:
On Tour Events: Technical Audio Visual Event Services London
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