The biggest change you can make to a room for the smallest line on the invoice - in the rooms that actually need it.
AE Entertainment provides wedding uplighting in Jacksonville, St. Augustine and across Northeast Florida. Uplighting means LED fixtures set around the edges of the reception room and aimed up the walls, which changes the color of the whole room without changing anything physical in it. AE Entertainment quotes uplighting as an add-on to a DJ package starting at $800 rather than as a separate rental, and most couples spend between $800 and $1,200 for the night.
Here is the part most lighting pages will not tell you: the first photo on this page is not our work.
That is The Clay Theatre in Green Cove Springs, and the green and blue running across those walls and ceiling coves belongs to the venue. Its packages include the LED system and the monogram. If you book us there, you do not need uplighting from us - we coordinate with what the room already does and you keep the money.
We put it first on purpose, because uplighting is one of the easiest add-ons in this business to sell to someone who does not need it. It is visual, it demos well in a photo, and almost nobody asks whether their venue already owns a rig.
The other two photos are rooms where it does the work: a plain reception hall that became magenta for the night, and a ceremony where blue on the surrounding walls did more than another few hundred dollars of florals would have. That is the honest split. Plain room, buy it. Room with its own character or its own lights, put the money somewhere else.
The Clay Theatre's system is the venue's own. Treasury on the Plaza and the Lightner Museum rotunda are ours.
Beige walls, a hotel ballroom, a hall with no real features. This is where uplighting earns its money, because there is nothing else in the frame doing the job and color is the cheapest thing that can.
A room lit by daylight through big windows does not need much help at 5pm. The same room at 9pm is a different problem, and if your dancing happens after sunset you are paying for the hours that matter.
Some venues build lighting into their packages. Adding a second set means two systems fighting over the same walls and you paying twice. Ask them first, then tell us the answer.
Exposed brick, a barn with string lights, a small space that feels finished on its own. We have written the same thing on our own venue pages. If your room is the reason you booked it, uplighting is competing with it, not helping it.
The same fixtures cost different amounts depending on who carries them through the door.
A lighting company quotes the fixtures, then a delivery fee, then a pickup, and often a minimum that has nothing to do with how many lights you wanted. Two vendors now need to be in the room during setup, and neither one is running your timeline.
The fixtures arrive in the same load as the speakers, get set during the same setup window, and go on the same quote as everything else. One number, one company, one person to call if the color is wrong.
Uplighting is an add-on to an AE Entertainment DJ package that starts at $800, quoted with your hours, your ceremony coverage and anything else you want on the same invoice. Most Jacksonville-area couples spend between $800 and $1,200 total. If you want to see where the numbers in this category actually come from before you talk to anyone, our cost guide breaks it down.
Around town it is usually quoted somewhere in the low hundreds as a standalone rental, and our own Jacksonville cost guide walks through where those numbers come from. AE Entertainment adds it to a DJ package that starts at $800 instead of billing it as a separate delivery, so most of our couples land between $800 and $1,200 for the whole night with uplighting included in that.
For a plain room, it is the largest visual change you can buy for the least money - nothing else on the add-on list changes every wide photo of the reception. For a room that already has character, or one your venue already lights, it is not. We would rather tell you which one you have booked than sell it to you either way.
Some do. The Clay Theatre is the clearest example we work with - its packages include LED uplighting and the venue's own ceiling color washes, so most couples there do not need a second set from us and we just coordinate with what the room already does. Ask your venue before you add it to any DJ quote, ours included.
Yes, and we set the color in the room on the day rather than agreeing to a name over email. Colors read differently against beige walls than they do against brick, and a shade that looked right on a phone screen can come out muddy on the actual wall. Send a photo of the palette and we will get it close, then adjust on site.
Around the edges of the room, on the floor, aimed up the walls - usually the perimeter, the wall behind the head table, and any architectural feature worth pointing at. They are placed before guests arrive and they are not in anyone's way. If your venue has rules about where gear can sit, tell us and we will work inside them.
Yes. It is one of the add-ons we quote alongside ceremony sound, extra hours and the photo booth, and it goes on the same quote as everything else so there is one number and one company. Tell us your venue when you ask, because the honest answer for a couple of the rooms we play is that you do not need it.
Send the date and the room. We will tell you whether uplighting is worth adding there or whether your venue has it covered, and quote the night either way.
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