Weddings · Bagshot, Surrey
Lakhita & Satnaam's Marquee Wedding at Pennyhill Park
Pennyhill Park · Bagshot, Surrey
Five hundred guests in a marquee on the lawns at Pennyhill Park, a mehfil band flown in from Canada, DJ H to take the room off them, and a dancefloor we printed as a mirror so that every light we hung would count twice. Silver Fox Events ran the day. We built the room and ran the night in it.
Pennyhill Park, Surrey
Venue
500
Guests
Mahood Marquees
Marquee
DJ H · mehfil band
Line-up
The marquee
A white room that would be whatever colour we told it
A marquee is the most honest venue there is. No architecture to lean on, no chandeliers already doing half the work: white walls, a white ceiling, and whatever you bring. Mahood Marquees put the structure up on the lawns and Silver Fox Events, who we work for as a preferred supplier, dressed it: round tables in white chiavari chairs with purple florals on every one and a floral installation hung over the floor, while Food Link UK fed five hundred out of the back. Our job was the colour. We ran two looks through the night, a purple that made the draping glow for dinner and a blue that pulled everything toward the floor, and moved between them as the evening did.
The floor and the bar
A dancefloor and a bar, both printed as mirror
We printed the dancefloor as a mirror in a chequerboard, and the bar to match, raised so it read from the far end of a room that is otherwise dead flat. Here is why we like a mirror floor in a marquee more than anywhere. The ceiling is fabric and gives nothing back, so the floor is the only surface that will. Every beam, every colour change and the florals hanging above all land on it a second time, upside down. The room looks like it has twice the rig in it. It does not. It has a floor that is doing its share.
The music
A mehfil band from Canada, then DJ H
The band came over from Canada for the night, and a mehfil in a marquee is a sound job before it is anything else. Five hundred people in a tent with no walls to hold the low end, and a band that wants to be heard clearly rather than loudly. So the PA went in for them first, tuned for voices and the tabla, and DJ H played on the same system after the handover rather than on a rig of his own. One system, one set of levels, no lurch in volume when the band stood up and the DJ sat down. That handover is the moment most marquee nights lose ten minutes and a floor. This one did not.
The grounds
We lit the trees so the walk was part of the night
Guests at a marquee wedding walk to it, across grounds that are pitch black by nine o'clock. Pennyhill Park's grounds are the best thing about the place, so rather than a line of festoon to the door we lit the trees. Uplighters at the base of every trunk along the path in red and orange, ground-level lights marking the way, a hedge picked out in green and blue, and a clearing with seating in it lit for anyone stepping out of the party. From the marquee door the house sat behind it all, lit up. The trees became the walls of an outdoor room, and people used it.
The party
Red, and then everything at once
Once the band had finished and the floor was DJ H's, the lighting stopped being decor. Beams across the room, moving lights over the floor and the mirror underneath sending it all back, and the florals overhead taking whatever colour the room was in. For the last stretch we ran it deep red, which is the colour we reach for when a floor is full and nobody is leaving. The photographs of that hour are the ones with no empty space in them. Every photograph on this page is our own, taken by our team on the night.
What we delivered
- DJ H, playing and hosting the night
- Sound for the mehfil band from Canada, and the handover to the DJ on one system
- A dancefloor printed as a chequerboard mirror
- A raised bar printed in the same mirror finish
- Full lighting production inside the marquee, moving lights and two colour looks
- Outdoor lighting across the grounds: trees, paths, the hedge and a lit clearing
“Print the floor as a mirror and every light you hang counts twice.”
The gallery
On the day
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Questions
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