Wedding at Chateau Impney

Introduction

At the start of the year we were approached by a lovely couple who enquired about providing production elements for their wedding day, to be held at the Chateau Impney Hotel in Droitwich.

After meeting them at Chateau Impney and understanding the scale of the wedding, it was clear this was going to be a great project to be involved with.

 

Pre-Production

On receiving the brief, our production team were tasked with providing a quotation to suit the client’s requirements this involved talking to entertainment/ bands to spec their technical riders, as well as providing correct audio and lighting suitable for 680-700 guests in a large venue.

To give the client with a clearer understanding of the quotation, a 3D visual of the room at Chateau Impney, built from a CAD plan, so the client could see what the lighting and stage would look like prior to us installing the event.

Equipment Used

 

Audio

As there were multiple live bands performing to a large capacity throughout the evening as well as speeches for the wedding, we opted for a large PA system built up with front of house, side fills and delay speakers. An L’Acoustic soundvision was created which allows us to plot in the venue and map where the sound will go and how many speakers are required for the venue to have the perfect coverage.

The main front of house PA was our L’Acoustics KARA line array (three units per side) on top of the L’Acoustic SB18 sub speakers (again, three per side). This provided a system capable of filling the dancefloor with the clarity and depth to reproduce the bands in high detail as well as an even sound coverage over 100db.

As the venue was quite wide, we provided two L’Acoustic 12XT speakers further down the room to fill in the gaps that the front of house PA system would miss. This then provided a much more even sound coverage and direct sound for all guests.

The venue also had a large balcony area which also had guests seated and would also need to hear the speeches etc throughout the evening. We provided four of our L’Acoustic X8 speakers, which provided extra coverage and also gave us the opportunity of putting the band through them if required.

All microphones, bands backline (inc instruments), in ear monitors and stage wedges were all supplied to the bands technical riders.

This was all controlled via our Yamaha QL5 digital mixing desk complete with a RIO stage box, allowing us to send the microphone and band signals down a single cable.

 

Lighting

The lighting was possibly the most important aspect from the brief. With a room so large, the idea was to transform the venues room décor into a venue fit for a wedding. A total of 116 lighting fixtures were installed within the roof and the stage. All the lighting was programmed off an Avolites Quartz desk. To power the lighting, we opted for an Avolites ART2000, which provided us with a lot of flexibility as well as power and cable management.

 

Room Lighting

The colour theme for the wedding was red and white. With the room decorated with white draping, we essentially had a blank canvas to work with. We installed forty Elation Sixbar LED bar lights surrounding the perimeter of the room, allowing us to change the colour of the draping to red, to fit the theme. To provide extra depth, we utilised the rooms exiting scaff beams to rig eight Chauvet R3 wash lights and twenty source 4 jr’s (fitted with a break up gobo) to provide the room with a complete wash of colour as well as some decorative dappled lighting effect.

A custom gobo was also designed and fitted to one of our Elation Davinci lights, and rigged to the venues scaff. This provided a large logo projected onto the draping, providing a fantastic persona touch as well as a large statement to the decoration.

Two scissor lifts were used to install the lighting in the roof.

 

Stage Lighting

To provide lighting for the band as well as a focal point to the room we supplied an array of various lighting fixtures from wash, spot and beams to create a dramatic and exciting light show. For the wash lighting we provided twelve Chauvet R2 moving heads which allowed us to flood the stage in a wash of any colour of our choosing at any point. To create the dramatic effects, and lighting shapes we provided six Elation Davinci Spot lights and eight Elation 5R beam Extreme lights. These created high intensity spot and beam lights which could move and change colour to the tempo of the bands.

We also provided six more Source 4Jr lights to light up the band members in a warm white colour so they would remain in view when all the other fixtures were moving.

 

Rigging

The stage lighting was rigged to a truss box, which we installed allowing us to give multiple layer options to riff the lighting off.

A total of 72m of truss was used to create the truss box and 4 of our Genie SLA15 Super Lifts were used to raise it into position.

 

Effects

At the front of the stage we install four of our Sparkular effects, which during the first dance and sections of the bands performance were used to create spectacular show stopping sparks, reaching heights of 5m!

 

Staging

We supplied a few finishing touches to the event which included a small 13ft x 13ft stage at 0.3m in height to be used as a top table. This was finished with white carpet and casement to fit with the colour theme.

We also provided stage steps which were installed in the centre of the existing venue stage, so bands and the bride and groom to enter and exit the stage. These were also finished in white carpet and casement.

 

Stats

Total Equipment Value – £295,927

Total Weight – 8,359.24Kg

Transport – 1x 44T Artic Truck

Premier Team

• 1x Senior Lighting Engineer
• 1x Senior Sound Engineer
• 1x Patch Technician
• 1x Production Manager
• 6x General Technicians
• 12x Crew