A Wedding is much like a hoard of dragon shaped pedal boats sailing in front of a brightly lit stage in the middle of a lake. The bright lights of the stage represent the brightness of the futu…ok, maybe it’s not, but to be perfectly honest it’s difficult to muse on much else when you’re sitting at the lighting desk and watching this bizarre spectacle unfold! You see when I’m not writing about weddings, filming weddings or planning my wedding I do something completely different, something I’ve loved doing all my life. This weekend I have taken a little break from the world of weddings to light up a music festival that I’ve been involved in for many years.
It’s the weirdest festival to work on. It begins at 12 o’clock and doesn’t stop for more than 5 minutes for the next 11 hours. The stage is a tiny bandstand in the middle of the lake and the only access to it is via a giant motorboat swan which has to fight it’s way through the massed peddle boats which are shaped as dragons… I’m actually not making this up! As I write this a Salsa band is playing on stage and behind the control position where I sit on the shore, 50 or so people are Salsa-ing away merrily in the sunshine! It’s an amazing atmosphere, kids and adults alike enjoying a day in the park, dancing along to the music, having a picnic, watching top names like the Lightning Seeds playing alongside local acts at the beginning of their careers. It’s so relaxed and friendly… it’s the kind of atmosphere I dream about for our wedding!
Dom and I decided a long time ago that we wanted to keep the wedding very informal and relaxed. We chose to get married somewhere almost guaranteed to be hot (oops…jinxed that one then!), somewhere tropical and relaxed precisely because we wanted everyone to really enjoy themselves, relax and treat it as a holiday. We didn’t want the formal suits and rigid schedules, we wanted to create ourselves a spectacular fiesta on this Spanish colonial Island. Whether we’ll achieve it I don’t know, but we could definitely take a few tips from events like todays in how to get it just right. Perhaps it’s dragons that we need? Or maybe Pirates are the key to a good wedding? Either way…let’s do it!
Anyway, whilst I’m not sure I can afford to hire 50 something bands to play the day and probably shouldn’t try floating a stage in the middle of the sea, I hope our wedding will be just as fun for all the guests as the Acoustic Gathering festival has clearly been for the crowds behind me. Sometimes in the midst of wedding planning and working hard you can get too caught up in it all, sometimes it’s good to get away and recharge the batteries and get inspired by unusual ideas, different types of events, concepts that may at first seem irrelevant to a wedding but can provide just the creative spark you need. Sometimes it’s best to take your inspiration from everyday life, and sometimes what you really need is just a day in the park.
.jpeg "Acoustic Gathering 1")
