Decorating your wedding marquee with Chinese hanging lanterns
This is where you will find all of the essential information to enable you to decorate your wedding marquee with paper hanging lanterns, illuminate them if you want the hanging lanterns to be your main source of light, make decisions about how many Chinese lanterns you need in your wedding marquee, and even provide inspiration and ideas on designs.
1) How many Chinese lanterns do I need for my wedding marquee?
The number of paper lanterns you’ll need depends entirely upon how you want to decorate your wedding marquee. Why not take a look at our paper lantern gallery to get ideas on how to hang your lanterns.
Things to consider include;
- Your budget: although the more lanterns you buy the more of a bulk buy discount you will receive. For quantities other than those listed on our site why not contact us for help.
- How much coverage do you need paper lanterns to provide? Do you want to hide the wedding marquee ceiling, or just decorate an area above your dance floor or by the entrance of the marquee?
- Are your hanging lanterns purely for decorative purposes or do you need lanterns to provide your main lighting solution? If paper lanterns are decorative you can hang them where you want to, if hanging lanterns are required to be used with festoon lighting or cables kits (see lighting below) you will be restricted as to where you can hang your paper lanterns based on power supplies.
2) How do I hang my Chinese paper lanterns?
Hanging lanterns are very easy to assemble and hang. They arrive individually wrapped, flat packed with a wire expander. Simply insert the wire expander into the lantern to give it its shape. The wire expander has a dual purpose hook; one purpose of the hook is that it enables you to suspend your lantern; the second purpose is so you can suspend an individual light unit inside your lantern such as a floralyte (see below).
Hanging lanterns can be hung from festoon lighting or fairy lights (when using our smaller paper lanterns) simply by running the cable through the hook in the wire expander.
Other brides who are using Chinese lanterns in their wedding marquees just for decoration use materials such a fishing wire or coloured ribbon to hang their lanterns up.
3) How should I illuminate my Chinese lanterns?
There are a number of options to illuminate your hanging lanterns:
- Festoon lighting – a fantastic option if you need your paper lanterns to provide the main lighting source in your wedding marquee. Fairy lights can be a suitable alternative when using our small 4” Chinese lanterns. Wedding marquee companies can often offer festoon lighting kits if they already own them, if not the Hanging Lantern Company has some coming soon! Festoon kits can often be dimmable which is great as you may want to create a romantic atmosphere in your wedding marquee.
- LED light units – we currently have two types of LED unit, our super efficient LED light which last for up to 14 hours, and our super bright LED light units which last up to 8 hours. Both styles are suitable for use in our paper lantern range from 4” to 20”, although you may wish to use a couple of lights per larger hanging lantern. Each LED unit can be hung from the hook in the wire expander of the hanging lantern and can be switched on and off as required.
- Floralytes – are a more cost effective method of illuminating your paper lanterns from 4” to 18”, again you may wish to hang a couple of floralytes inside our larger paper lanterns. Each floralyte can be switched on and off as required and usually lasts 36 to 48 hours!
4) When should I switch the lights on inside my Chinese lanterns?
Switching lights on in your paper lanterns does depend on the type of lighting unit you use. Festoon lighting is often available with a dimmable switch which means you can have your hanging lanterns dimly lit during the day and then switch the brightness up as the night falls on your wedding.
Floralytes and LED light units all have their own on/off switches and most will last long enough for your wedding reception or celebration but you may need to consider who is going to turn each individual light on whilst your wedding reception is in full swing! It therefore would be advisable to turn your floralytes or LED light units on as you hang your paper lanterns around your wedding marquee or venue.
5) - Will my Chinese lanterns provide enough light in my wedding marquee for the evening celebration?
Chinese hanging lanterns can provide a simple decorative solution to a bland wedding marquee but can also be used to provide a lighting source at your wedding.
If you need your paper lanterns to provide your entire lighting source in your wedding marquee you will need to use festoon lighting, many options allow you to dim the lights during the day and turn them up as required through the course of your reception.
Floralytes and LED units will provide clusters of lighting depending on where and how you have hung your paper lanterns around the wedding marquee. You many want to hang a number of floralytes or LED light units inside your lanterns, especially in our larger paper lanterns, to ensure they provide enough light.
6) What design ideas would you recommend?
Why not take a look at our hanging lantern picture gallery…..this will start to give you some ideas of how to hang paper lanterns, how to spread them around your wedding marquee, and also suggestions of colours that work well together.
If there is a paper lantern picture in our gallery just let us know which one it is when you contact us. We can identify which colour and size paper lanterns have been provided for that wedding venue and suggest ways for you to recreate the look in your own wedding marquee.
Another great source of inspiration for decorating your wedding with paper lanterns are wedding magazines! We have featured in ‘Wedding’, the UK’s leading wedding magazine, several times now and always ensure to put the images and text live when the magazines are published.
7) Can I also use Chinese lanterns on my dinner tables?
Of course you can! Paper lanterns are versatile enough to be used inside and outside your wedding marquee or reception venue. You may want to fill a vase in the centre of each table with our small 4” paper lanterns, or simply use a single 8” paper lantern in the centre of your table to hold flowers. Alternatively place a singe paper lantern on a light base in the centre of each table to give a romantic feel to every table.
8) What size Chinese lanterns do I need for my wedding marquee?
Simply let us know the size of your wedding marquee, and if there are any pictures in our hanging lantern gallery that you like. We can then work with you to work out what size paper lantern you need to recreate the look or make other suggestions to suit your budget.
9) Do I need someone to assemble my lanterns for me or can I DIY?
The key to this question is budget and time will dictate!! We work with a professional lighting company to cover as much of the UK as possible, they will be able to come to your venue, set your hanging lanterns up and provide a fully dimmable lighting solution in your wedding marquee or reception venue. Alternatively you may want to rope your family and friends into helping you assemble your paper lanterns and suspend them from the marquee frame.
10) What safety aspects do I need to consider?
When wanting to hang paper lanterns in any venue, whether it is a grade II listed building or a marquee in your garden you should think about the safety aspects! Your wedding venue may be perfectly happy for you to use paper hanging lanterns, whilst others may require either fire proofed hanging lanterns, or to see our safety report regarding the use of lanterns with lighting units.
Our advice would be to always consult your venue or wedding marquee provider – never assume! If your venue requires a copy of our report showing compliance with the BS EN 60598 safety directive then just let us know and we can email or fax a copy directly to them. If your venue or marquee requires for lanterns to be fire proofed you will need to order nylon hanging lanterns and simply spray them with fire proofing spray that can be easily obtained online.