LEARN EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MONOGRAM LIGHTING AND GOBOS!

This episode is all about gobos and monogram lighting. This is a type of wedding lighting that helps you create a beautiful personalized look for your reception. So, let's jump right in and talk about everything you need to know about gobos!

WHAT’S A GOBO?

So first things first, what is a gobo?  A gobo is a type of wedding light that projects your name or monogram in lights. This is definitely one of my favorite types of wedding lighting because it really adds that Wow factor! Guests will walk into the room and it's the first thing they see it grabs your attention and it's just such a great way to personalize the venue and really make it your own for your big day. You can project your monogram pretty much anywhere - so you could shine it on the wall behind your head table or down on the dance floor. It's a great way to dress up your venue, and it's so customized.

WHAT DESIGNS CAN YOU USE FOR MONOGRAM LIGHTS?

You can do anything you want with monogram lighting! You could use the design from your invitations and project that in lights or you can create your own personalized monogram just for your wedding. So monogram lighting is a really nice way to make your wedding stand out and had a beautiful finishing Touch.

PLEASE LEARN HOW TO PRONOUNCE GOBO!

Now, I want to talk for a second about the word itself Gobo. That’s G-o-b-o. This is one of those words that for some reason NO ONE can pronounce. I've heard it called so many things like globo and gabo and hobo and bogo. So, please do yourself a favor and learn how to say Gobo -- or just make it easy on yourself and call it monogram lighting.

WHERE TO USE MONOGRAM LIGHTING?

There are so many different ways that you can use the monogram light for your reception. You can really project it anywhere that you've got a solid surface. The most popular is to protect it on a wall. You can do that on just a blank wall that you have in the venue that needs a little something or you could protect it behind the sweetheart table or behind the cake table. And when you do that, it creates such a beautiful backdrop. So those wedding photos are going to look amazing. You'll see the cake with the monogram behind it. And I've seen too when couples project the monogram behind their sweetheart table it becomes kind of a really nice photo op because guests will start walking up to the couple they take pictures together and now you've got that really nice memento. You can do monogram lighting is if you want to cover the ceiling do something a little different you can do it there or you can project down onto the dance floor, which is a really nice look for that first dance. I've seen people that want a really grand entrance to the wedding. So they projected on the side of the reception venues of people see it as they're walking in. If you're having an outdoor wedding, you can actually project the monogram light on a pool. Another thing you can do is become project the monogram light on a backdrop. So if you've got a linen backdrop that you're using for the head table or the cake table, you can actually project the monogram there as well. So it doesn't need to be a wall or that type of surface. It can be Fabric or anything else.

HOW TO SETUP MONOGRAM LIGHTING?

Let's talk about how to set up monogram lighting. The setup is super easy. So all you actually need to do is set it on a table and pointed at the wall or wherever you want to show them monogrammed lights. And that's all there is to it. You'll see that monogram just light up right on the wall. And if you want to project onto the Dance Floor, you'll need a tripod or a lighting stand. It's just like a tripod you’ve Probably seen for a camera. So you just threw the projector onto the tripod and then you raise it up -- and we always recommend raising these up about 10 to 12 feet high and that's going to give you enough height to get a really nice size projection image on the Dancefloor.

WHAT DOES A MONOGRAM LIGHT LOOK LIKE?

Okay. So now that we've got that covered. You're probably wondering what does a monogram light look like?  The monogram light itself is a small projector. So it's maybe about 6 in long and 4 inches wide. It's a small box, but it delivered this big monogram production and the way it works we'll get technical for a second is that inside the projector? There is a small little disk and that disc is what's customized with your design. It's kind of like a stencil said the light inside the projector shines through the stencil and then there's a magnifying lens that makes the image larger when it gets onto the wall. So that's the technical side of how it works and what it actually looks like but if you're using monogram lighting, all you really need to know is that you basically just plug this thing in and it shows the monogram.

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF GOBO PROJECTORS?

All right. So next let's talk about what types of projectors are there for doing monogram lighting. So this type of lighting is always done with a special type of projector that specifically a gobo projector. So a regular projector that you might use for a slideshow is not going to work. It's a little different. So you're looking for a gobo projector or monogram projector. There are probably thousands of different projectors out there. So what I'll do is I'll talk about the three that we use for rent my wedding and those kind of give you a good idea of the type of projectors that you'll see out there so far are projectors we break it down as a standard projector a premium projector in a pro projector know the difference between them really boils down to the brightness of the lights and the size of the image. So when you're deciding which projector to go with it really just depends on where you can put the projector in your Venue and then how big you want your image to be. So for the standard projector, that one works great for the typical wedding you can place this projector up to 20 feet away from the wall and you just need to dim the overhead lights. But if you need to put that projector more than 20 feet away from the wall, or if you can't dim the lights in your bed, you should go with the premium projector. So the premium is a brighter projector, which means you can put it farther away and you don't have to dim the overhead lights. This one can actually go up to 70 ft away from the wall and it'll show up really nice and bright even if you've got, you know full windows with sunlight coming and you're still going to see this monogram light.  The last projector is the pro gobo, and that one is almost exactly the same as the premium. The only difference is the size. So you get the same brightness level you can pull this projector up to 70 feet away from the wall and the image is going to be double the size of the image with the premium. So the pro projector is really only if you need to do a large format projection and that's not something that's super common for most weddings. But occasionally we have people who want to do, you know, maybe on the side of the building as you enter the venue they'll do a really huge monogram there or you might want the entire ceiling to have that monogram light or design. So the progobo is your option if you're looking to do something really large format.

COLORS AND DESIGNS FOR GOBOS

Let's get into the fun stuff the designs and colors. You can really do anything you want when it comes to designing your monogram lights so you can work with a lighting company and usually they'll have a catalog so that's a good starting point. You can flip through the catalog and find a template that you like and then the template will get customized with your own names your wedding date or whatever you want. It's really customizable.

If you want to go with a color there's definitely a lot of options for that! Usually the lighting professional’s going to tell you which colors are going to look the best. Those are going to be lighter colors. So you can do pink blue yellow green anything like that. The colors that don't project as well would be really dark colors like red or purple -- those don't project that well and it just has to do with the lighting technology and how it's done. So the color is actually a filter that goes in front of the lights inside the projector. So it's not a big deal if you're using a lighter color. It's not going to block out enough light to really be noticeable. With dark colors like deep purple it just blocks so much that I don't even like to use it because then it gets tricky. You've got to make sure you dim the overhead lights a lot so that the monogram shows up. So to keep it simple just follow can of the general rule of thumb white is always going to project the brightest and the best. And then light colors will also look really nice.

CAN YOU PROJECT A WHITE GOBO ON A WHITE WALL?

Now a question that always comes up whenever I tell people that white is the best and the brightest color for gobos, they always tell me, you know, well, the wall is white. So I guess I won't be able to use the white monogram, right? And actually it's exactly the opposite. The monogram light will have the absolute best projection when it's the white light on a white wall. I know it sounds weird and it doesn't make sense but it's how the lighting technology works. Now, I won't bore you and get into all those technical details. But if you want to see it for yourself grab a flashlight shining down and white wall, and you'll actually see that that white flash light shows up really bright on your white wall. So the same thing goes for monogram lighting -- white light works great.

WHERE TO GET GOBOS AND MONOGRAM LIGHTS

Alright. So the last thing we'll talk about today is where to get monogram lighting so you can either buy it or rent it and I definitely recommend this is one of those things that you should really just rent -- buying monogram lights is a really technical process and it's expensive and if you don't know what you're doing it can just blow up in your face because you've got to get the right projector and the right disc that goes inside and you have to do graphic design and there's a lot of other factors that come into play. So unless you're trying to start a lighting company, I would definitely say you should just rent a Monogram Lite because it's so easy and then you're guaranteed to have it working perfectly. So you just order the Monogram Light, it shows up preloaded with your design. And all you have to do is plug it in! Now if you are going to rent a monogram light, of course, there's different ways. So you can hire a full-service professional who will come and actually set up the light and tear it down for you. Or you can look for do it yourself rental options. The great thing is that it's actually really easy to set up your own monogram light so you can save a ton of money if you take about 5 minutes to set it up yourself. So I’ll explain how that works. If you're using our company rentmywedding, this is how it would go if you're renting the do-it-yourself Monogram Light. First, you would just go on the website and pick your projector and pick your design. So there's a catalog which makes it really easy. You can pick out any design that you like there or are you can upload your own logo or your own artwork file or send us a link to something you've seen if you saw a Pinterest photo and you loved it, you can send us that and we can turn that into your monogram light. So once you order online and pick your artwork, then we send you a preview of your customized artwork. So we take that catalog template. We customize it with your names and then we send that over to you and you'll get to see it and approve it before we finalize your actual projector and you can make as many changes or designs as you want. We include unlimited proofs with our flat rate pricing so our graphic design team will work with you to design exactly what you want. Then once you've approved everything we ship it out so that you get that monogram light delivered at least two days before your wedding. It comes in this cute little briefcase. On the day of the wedding you take it out, you set it on the table and you just point it wherever you want to display the monogram lights. After the wedding pack it up in the same box and send it back using the prepaid return label.

SUMMARY

So that is everything you need to know about gobos and monogram lighting now. If you have any questions definitely get in touch! My email is Marie at transform your wedding dot com. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you guys next time!

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