The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey

Most people picture an LED wall as somewhere to play a montage. Used as a full-stage backdrop it does something else entirely: it sets the colour and mood of the whole room and it changes through the night. On this wedding the walls carried content that matched the floral and lighting design rather than competing with it, which is the difference between a production element and a television at a party.

It also holds up in a lit ballroom, which projection does not. In a room with chandeliers and ambient light, a projected image washes out — that is the practical reason LED has become the default for receptions at this level.

A hanging installation over the dance floor is a lighting opportunity that is easy to waste. Lit from the wrong angle it goes flat or throws shadows onto the floor. On this event the uplighting and the wall colour were chosen to sit with the florals, and the fixtures were positioned to give the installation depth from the guests' eye line rather than from above.

Where a floral installation is involved, we plan our positions with the florist rather than after them — it is a coordination problem more than a technical one.

An LED build of this kind needs real setup time and a clear picture of the room before the day. Access windows, dock and elevator use, ground-support footprint and the hotel's insurance requirement are confirmed with the property for your date. Anything structural or any effect beyond standard sound and lighting is a permission conversation with the hotel, and we open it early.

A hotel reception is really four rooms wearing the same carpet: a cocktail hour where people are still talking, a seated dinner where the music sits underneath conversation, a set of formal moments that have to be heard cleanly at the back, and a dance floor that has to feel like a different place entirely. The production either follows that arc or fights it.

In practice that means the lighting state changes on purpose rather than sitting at one setting all night, the volume is different in each of those four phases, and the microphone used for speeches and toasts is treated as its own system rather than something handed over at the last minute. Guests never notice the transitions when they are planned. They notice nothing else when they are not.

Our own work is open-format and multicultural: American Top 40, hip-hop and house alongside Persian, Israeli and Jewish celebration music, plus Armenian, Russian, Greek and Arabic sets when the families call for them. That is a description of what we play, not a claim about this hotel or the events other companies have produced here.

Where two families want two different nights, we plan the running order with you in advance rather than improvising it at the booth. The point is that nobody sits through a long stretch of music that was not meant for them.