Wedding Lighting in Nashville: Uplighting vs. String Lights vs. Gobos

Short answer: uplighting changes the color of the room, string lights give it a ceiling, and a gobo puts your name on it. Most Nashville receptions need uplighting. Tall, tented and outdoor spaces need string lights. A monogram gobo is the cheapest way to make a room look like it belongs to you and not to the last forty weddings held in it. Big, plain, tall rooms usually want all three.

We have lit more than 500 weddings in this city — ballrooms, barns, tents, chapels, glass pavilions and back yards — and the question we hear most is not “how much” but “which one do we actually need?” Here is how we answer it.

Uplighting vs. string lights vs. gobos at a glance

What uplighting does at a wedding

Uplighting is a light on the floor aimed up a wall or a column. It is also the biggest change per dollar in wedding lighting, because the walls are in nearly every photograph, and most venue walls are cream, beige or gray for a reason: they are chosen to go with anything, which in pictures means they go with nothing.

Ours are battery-powered and wireless, so they sit where they look best rather than where the outlets happen to be, and there is no cable across the floor for a guest in heels to find. The rule of thumb is one fixture every 8 to 10 feet of wall you actually want lit: a typical hotel ballroom takes 12 to 20, a smaller reception room 8 to 12. A package of 10 to 20 runs $500–$1,500 — see uplighting and event lighting rental for what is in it.

Ivory, champagne and warm amber read as romance and are kind to skin. Deep blue is drama. Your wedding colors work too, in moderation — a room that is sapphire for the dance floor can feel a little cold at dinner. If you want the room to shift when the dancing starts, that is a cue, and somebody has to be there to run it. Uplights can be set and left, or run live by a technician; it is your call on the quote.

What string lights do (they are a ceiling, not a decoration)

String lights solve a different problem. Uplighting colors the walls; string lights give a room a ceiling. In a barn with open rafters, a tent, a courtyard or a back yard after sunset, the eye drifts up into the dark and the space feels empty no matter how many people are in it. A canopy of warm bulbs pulls the ceiling down to the tables and turns a space into a room.

The layout is the design. Straight parallel runs read clean and formal in a ballroom or a tent. Looser catenary swags feel relaxed over a barn floor or a patio. Vertical drops are for something unusual. We stock Edison-style strands on black or white cord — black for industrial rooms and dark drape, white for tents, white ceilings and light surfaces — plus white LED twinkle lights for draped ceilings and LED rope for outlining a bar. The inventory is on the string lights rental in Nashville page.

Here is what the inspiration photos leave out: string lights are a rigging job. They hang off existing beams, off truss, or off our own uprights, and an outdoor canopy needs weather-protected power runs and a plan for where the power comes from — sometimes our own power distribution. A canopy that sags by the cake cutting, or a dead run over the dance floor, is the most visible failure at a wedding. That is why string lights are priced by the run — how many feet, how many support points, and whether our crew hangs them — and why a photo of your space is the fastest way to a quote.

What a gobo does: your monogram, in light

A gobo is a small patterned disc that drops into a focused light, so the fixture projects that pattern onto whatever it is aimed at. At a wedding that usually means your monogram, your names or your date on the dance floor, on the wall behind the head table, or on the drape behind the band. The longer story, including where the word comes from, is in what a gobo is.

It is one of the cheapest ways to make a plain room feel specifically like your wedding, and it is the shot that ends up on everyone’s phone. Three things to know before you order one:

• It is made to order from your artwork. Give us about a week where possible. The night before is not the time to change the font.
• Steel or glass. A steel gobo is a cut stencil: one color, razor-sharp, the classic choice for a monogram. A glass gobo is printed, so it can carry full color, gradients and photographic detail — a crest in your colors, or a moon over the first dance. Glass vs. steel gobos goes deeper.
• It needs a surface. A plain wall, white drape or the dance floor shows it off. A wall of windows or busy brick swallows it.

Which one does your venue need?

Hotel ballroom. Uplighting first. Ballrooms are built to be neutral, and neutral photographs as beige. A monogram on the dance floor or the drape behind the band is the second line. Ceilings are usually low enough that string lights are optional. Ask the hotel early what its AV policy is; in many rooms you can bring your own lighting company — here is how that works.

Barn or industrial venue. Tall rooms with rafters or steel. String lights and chandeliers are what pull the ceiling down; uplights on the columns and beams make the structure part of the design instead of something to ignore. Bring the ceiling down first, then color it.

Tent. A tent is a big white ceiling, which makes string lights the obvious first move: runs along the frame, or a canopy over the dance floor. Uplights on the perimeter add color. Power is the real question, and it gets planned at the site walk, not the morning of.

Outdoor ceremony or back yard. String lights on uprights, trees or the house; battery uplights on trees and hedges, which do more than you would think once the sun goes down. Where there is no power nearby, we bring our own.

Chapel or historic hall. White or stone walls are a gift to uplighting, and a monogram on a plain wall looks like it was always meant to be there.

When you need all three

When the room is big, plain and tall at the same time. A white hall with open trusses, like the one below, is the textbook case: string lights across the trusses give it a ceiling, warm uplights along the walls take the edge off all that white, and a monogram on the end wall tells everyone whose night it is. Each one fixes something the other two cannot.

If the budget covers only one or two, here is the order we usually suggest:

1. Uplighting, because it changes every photograph for the least money.
2. A gobo, because it is the cheapest way to make the room yours.
3. String lights, where the room needs a ceiling — and in a tent or an open-rafter barn, this one jumps to the front of the line.

What wedding lighting costs in Nashville

These come from our published AV rental cost guide and Nashville wedding AV guide, not invented for this post:

• Uplighting package, 10–20 wireless fixtures: $500–$1,500
• String lights, chandeliers and gobo monograms: quoted from the hang — height, span and rigging points drive the labor more than the fixture count
• A fully designed look — uplighting plus chandeliers, a gobo, pin spots and string lighting: typically $2,000–$4,000
• Ceremony sound, if you need that too: a basic PA system starts around $300–$700

You get one itemized quote, so you can see what each piece costs and drop the one you don’t need.

Rent it yourself, or have it hung?

Uplights, small fixtures and string-light strands are available for will-call pickup at our Nashville warehouse, often same day. We set your uplight colors and show you the wireless remote before you leave. That works well for a dozen uplights in a room someone on your side can set, or a strand along a fence line.

Anything that hangs over guests — a string-light canopy across a dance floor or a tent, chandeliers, anything on truss — goes up with our crew. A strand landing on the dance floor is memorable in the wrong way.

Book the lighting when you book the venue

For April, May, September and October — Nashville’s peak wedding months — book at least six months ahead; the rest of the year, at least three. That leaves time to walk the venue, plan the hang and the power, and order a custom gobo without rushing the artwork. We work alongside your planner, florist and caterer: greenery on a chandelier or florals woven into a canopy get sorted at the walk-through, not at three o’clock on the day.

If you would rather someone own the whole look, that is our lighting design service. For the full ceremony-to-last-dance plan, sound included, see wedding AV and lighting.