Come Fly With Me

Charlie and Mary’s Flying Themed Wedding

We are all about original wedding ideas around here and last weekend we had the opportunity to do lighting for a truly unique wedding. Charlie and Mary had their reception in an airplane hanger at Palwaukee Field and what an amazing wedding it was.

The minute they approached me with the idea I was on board (get ready for lots of airplane puns…). The couple was looking for unique wedding venues and the fact that Charlie is a pilot made the hangar the perfect spot. Mary already had some ideas on how to incorporate lighting into their decor and after a visit to the hangar and a couple of brainstorming sessions we had come up with a lighting design to transform the hangar into the setting for their perfect flying themed wedding.

I was looking forward to seeing our vision come to life and anxiously counted down the days to their wedding all summer. The day finally came and after a lot of hard work we had the hangar looking fantastic.

We had a blank canvas to work with for lighting as the hangar door was literally a huge white canvas. As the guests walked in there was light blue uplighting around the room and the hangar door was washed in a light sky blue giving the entire room the feel of floating in the sky. This made the perfect backdrop to the airplane sitting in the center of the hangar, which of course we had to spotlight.

After cocktail hour the wedding party and bride and groom were introduced to the very fitting “Come Fly With Me” by Frank Sinatra playing in the background.

About halfway through dinner the John Burnett String Orchestra took over. This is the first time I have had the pleasure of playing with them and I was thoroughly impressed. They had 20 members in the band and played a lot of jazz standards and big band that sounded out of this world.

Catering was provided by  All On The Road Catering and the food was fantastic.

As dinner ended and the bride and groom walked out onto the dance floor for their first dance the sky blue slowly faded into a midnight blue and stars appeared everywhere. It was truly an awesome setting for a first dance.

After the parents dances the band and DJ then took turns providing the music for dancing for the rest of the reception.

I have seen lot’s of great wedding shots but I think my new favorite is Charlie and Mary sitting on the wing of a plane! I can’t thank them both enough for letting us be a part of this truly cool and unique wedding.

PS – I took these pictures with a little point and shoot camera and cannot wait to take a look at the professional ones. I’ll post them here as soon as I get them.