Lighting the first dance
During the first dance everyone is watching two people, and the cameras are rolling. The light should show the couple and nothing else. That takes very little gear and a lot of restraint.
The basic recipe
- Soft, warm white on the couple. It flatters skin and is the safest choice.
- At an angle from above. About 45° works better than head-on at eye level.
- Keep the room dark and warm. Dimmed uplights in amber or rosé are enough.
- Mirror ball with a pin spot, if it suits the song.
- Slow fades. In a song, over about four to eight bars. As a look, over 10 to 15 seconds.
- No strobe, no laser, no fast movement. Twitchy heads are more distracting here than anywhere else.
Keep color off faces
Saturated colors look bad on skin, especially green, deep blue and magenta. Keep color on the walls and in the air. The couple gets warm white, even if the song feels blue or pink.
Photos and video
LED fixtures dim by switching on and off very quickly. Your eyes don't notice, but a camera often picks up moving stripes or flicker. A few things help:
- Don't dim the LEDs on the couple too far. Close to full brightness or with some white mixed in usually runs cleaner.
- If you can set the dimming frequency on the fixture (PWM), use the highest value.
- Talk to the photographer and videographer beforehand and run a quick test.
A laser has no place here. Nobody wants a green dot on their face in the wedding photo.
Song show or Static Look?
A song show only runs with that exact music file. If you play a different edit, a different version or a stream, there's no script for it. A Static Look with a soft fade works with any track. If the couple has settled on their song and given you the file, a song show is worth it. Otherwise use the look, or prepare both.
Step by step
- Tap a free pad under “Static Looks” and choose “First dance”.
- Under “Your lights in this look”, tap the moving heads. Set color and position and check them with “Show where the light lands”.
- Give the uplights a warm color and low brightness. Set anything distracting to Off.
- Set a soft fade under Fade in and out, see Designing a Static Look.
- For a song show, choose the mood “Romantic”. Under “Couple light”, Automatic checks which heads can reach the couple, see Special moments.
- A quick way in one sentence is Just say it: “first dance, romantic, rosé and gold, slow movers”.
Questions
Yes. The room can open up in the chorus, and open white beams are fine at the end. You trigger cold sparks yourself in SoundSwitch, see Sparks and fog.
Check the target in the visualizer under Setting mover positions. Clicking the dance floor as a target is often enough.
Start at around 60 %, then adjust by eye and for the cameras.
More from “Lighting know-how”
- Colors that work togetherGood shows get by with few colors. Two main colors plus white as an accent cover most of a song. What matters is which two you pick and where they land.free to read
- Why variety mattersA show works through contrast. If every light runs all the time, everything ends up looking the same and the big moment gets lost. Dark, calm stretches are what make a peak feel big.free to read
- Building a song show: from intro to dropA good song show retells the song: it starts small, opens up in the chorus, takes a breath in the middle and saves the brightest moment for the end. Droplit builds this arc by itself. Once you know how it works, you can fix things with more purpose.free to read
- Lead your moving heads, don't just wave themMoving heads get noticed right away. If they circle all the time, the show looks restless. Well-led heads often stand still, change position with purpose and move when the music calls for it.free to read
- Using gobos, rotation and prism wellA gobo is a small stencil inside a moving head that shapes the beam into a pattern. Add rotation and a prism and one head can give you many different pictures, as long as you use the three tools on purpose.free to read