Can I Add Uplighting to My DJ Package?

Uplighting is our most requested add-on. How it works with each package, what it costs, and the honest cases where we'd tell you to save your money.

A bride emailed us last April with a question we hear almost every week. She’d already booked our Big Sky package for a September reception at Double Arrow Lodge, then saw photos from another wedding there — those big timber walls washed in warm amber light — and wanted to know if it was too late to add uplighting. It wasn’t. It almost never is.

So yes, you can add uplighting to your DJ package. It’s the most requested add-on we offer, and after 500+ Montana weddings we’ve built some strong opinions about when it earns its money and when it doesn’t. The longer answer is worth a few minutes, because the package you start with changes the math, timing matters more than couples expect, and there are a few situations where we’ll flat-out tell you to keep the cash.

How Adding Uplighting to a DJ Package Works

Quick refresher on how our packages are built. Big Sky covers a four-hour reception — professional sound, MC duties, all the music planning and mixing. Glacier is those same four hours with uplighting included. Grand Yellowstone runs five hours and adds ceremony sound plus our premium lighting design. The full breakdown lives in our post on what each package includes.

So “adding uplighting” really means one of two things. Either you booked Big Sky and want lights bolted on afterward, or you’re standing at the decision point comparing Big Sky plus a lighting add-on against booking Glacier from the start. Nine times out of ten, Glacier wins that comparison. Roughly 70% of our couples land there, and plenty of them started out certain they didn’t need lighting at all. Then they see what a dozen fixtures do to a log wall.

That September bride at Double Arrow? We upgraded her to Glacier over one phone call, ran fourteen fixtures in warm amber around the lodge perimeter, and her photographer emailed us afterward asking what we’d used because the reception shots came out so well. Total time to fix: about ten minutes of paperwork.

Already booked and having second thoughts? Ask. We’ve added uplighting two weeks before a wedding. The one real constraint is peak season — July through September our lighting inventory gets spoken for, so earlier is better.

What an Uplighting Add-On Costs

We keep it simple: uplighting is a flat add-on, not a per-fixture rental where the quote balloons with the size of the room. Current numbers are on our pricing page, and if you’re budgeting the whole night, our breakdown of what a wedding DJ costs in Montana puts lighting in context with everything else.

One thing we’ll say plainly: upgrading from Big Sky to Glacier almost always beats hiring a separate lighting company. Rental outfits typically stack a delivery fee, a setup fee, and a pickup fee on top of the fixtures — and most won’t drive 40 minutes up a gravel road to a ranch outside Hamilton without tacking on mileage. We’re already coming to your venue. The lights ride in the same trailer as the speakers.

Worth knowing if you’re flexible on dates: our winter and weekday calendars have far more lighting inventory available, and a December reception is where uplighting works overtime. The sun is down by 5pm — your entire reception happens in the dark, so every dollar of lighting shows. We did a winter wedding at Missoula Winery a couple of years back where the amber wash was doing more for the room by dinner than it does at most July weddings all night.

Why Get Lighting From Your DJ Instead of a Rental Company?

It’s not just the invoice. It’s who’s in the room.

Rental companies drop fixtures off in the afternoon and leave. Whatever the room looks like at 4pm is what you get at 10pm. When we run the lighting, someone is actually there all night adjusting it — soft amber through dinner, deeper tones once the dance floor opens, everything shifted live to match the moment instead of locked to one setting.

There’s a safety piece too, and we learned it the hard way. At one reception a bartender tripped over a main power cable during the first dance and killed the entire event — sound, lights, all of it, in front of 200 people. Every cable we’ve run since gets taped, covered, or routed through ramps at high-traffic crossings. A dozen uplights means a dozen power runs along your venue walls, and the person planning those runs should be the same person who knows where the caterers walk and where the bar line forms.

What Uplighting Actually Does in Montana Venues

We wrote a full post on whether uplighting is worth it, so here’s the short version: Montana venues are built from wood, stone, and canvas, and all three love light.

Timber-frame barns are the best canvas in the state. Fixtures at the base of each post throw light up the grain and turn the whole structure golden. Log and stone lodge walls — think Holland Lake Lodge, or the halls at Chico Hot Springs — go from “dim after sunset” to genuinely dramatic. Tents might be the biggest change of all, because white canvas takes color like a projector screen. A plain rental tent with eight uplights inside stops looking like a rental tent.

The flip side: a venue already strung wall-to-wall with bistro lights doesn’t need much from us. The Loft at Whitefish has enough built-in ambiance that we usually suggest a lighter touch there — a few accent fixtures instead of the full perimeter.

How Many Uplights Does Your Venue Need?

Fewer than the internet says. A small room looks right with 8–10 fixtures. A typical Montana barn or lodge reception takes 12–16. A big tent perimeter can use 16–20. Past that you’re not adding drama, you’re adding clutter.

The honest way to get this number right is a venue walkthrough, not a formula. Room height matters, wall material matters, and where the caterer parks the buffet matters. We’ve worked most of the major venues in western Montana, so odds are decent we already know your room and have a fixture count in mind before you finish asking.

Battery-powered LED fixtures changed this game for rural venues. We did a barn outside Whitefish with no power outlets anywhere near the walls — wireless uplights meant zero extension cords crossing walkways. If your venue is remote, that matters more than any color choice. Our post on sound at remote Montana venues covers the power side of that same problem.

Uplighting Isn’t the Same as Dance Floor Lighting

Worth clearing up, because couples mix these up constantly. Uplighting is the ambient wash on your walls and architecture — it sets the mood of the whole room. Dance floor lighting is the moving, music-reactive stuff aimed at the people dancing. Pin spots are tight beams that make your cake or centerpieces pop. A monogram gobo projects your initials on a wall or floor.

Every package we run includes dance lighting where it makes sense. Uplighting is the add-on this post is about, and pin spots or a monogram can stack on top. Our Grand Yellowstone package bundles the premium versions of all of it, which is why couples planning a full five-hour night with ceremony coverage usually land there instead of stacking add-ons one at a time. If you’re not sure which tier you’re actually in, that’s a two-minute conversation — send us your venue and date and we’ll sort it out.

Colors and Placement: Opinions From 500+ Weddings

Ask a lighting catalog and every color is a great choice. Ask us and you’ll get opinions.

Warm amber wins in wood venues, full stop. It photographs beautifully, it flatters skin tones, and it makes a barn feel lit by firelight. Saturated red is the color we talk couples out of most — it muddies photos and makes guests look sunburned. Deep purple and blue earn their keep once dancing starts, which is exactly why DJ-controlled fixtures beat static rentals: you don’t pick one color and live with it all night.

One more tip that costs nothing: loop in your photographer. Good photographers in Montana shoot these venues constantly and they’ll tell you the same thing we do — warm tones read as candlelight on camera, cool tones read as a hockey rink. We’ve coordinated color plans with photographers plenty of times, and it takes one text message during planning.

Placement-wise, we light the perimeter unevenly on purpose. Fixtures go behind the head table, up the architecture worth showing off, and away from anywhere guests walk. We’ve handled entertainment and lighting for Paramount Pictures productions and private events with folks like Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford, and the biggest lesson from that work is restraint. The best lighting design is the one nobody consciously notices — people just remember the room feeling incredible.

When We’d Tell You to Skip It

Honest answer time. Uplighting earns its money after dark, and Montana summer sun doesn’t set until 9:30 or 10 in July. If your reception wraps at 9pm in an open-air venue, you’d be paying for half an hour of visible effect. Put that money toward an extra hour of music instead.

Same logic applies to elopements and tiny ceremonies that wrap before evening — spend on the moments people will actually experience. And a handful of couples each year ask us about uplighting for outdoor receptions with no walls or tent at all. There’s nothing for the light to wash. Open sky doesn’t take color, no matter what a Pinterest board promises.

Daytime-heavy events, venues with strong existing lighting design, and small rooms where a full perimeter would feel like a runway — those are the other cases where we’ll steer you elsewhere. We’d rather you spend where it shows. But if your reception runs past dark in a barn, lodge, or tent, uplighting is the highest-impact dollar you can add to the night. Flip through our gallery and you can spot which receptions had it in about two seconds.

How to Add It to Your Booking

If you’re already on our calendar, one email does it — we’ll confirm inventory for your date and update your agreement. The natural decision points are at booking (cheapest and safest for inventory) or right after your venue walkthrough, when you’ve stood in the room at the time of day your reception will actually happen. Standing in a dim lodge at 8pm makes this decision for most people.

If you’re still comparing packages, look hard at Glacier before piecing together Big Sky plus add-ons; it’s the better deal for most couples and the reason it’s our most-booked package. Either way, the lights, the sound, and the person running both arrive in one vehicle and answer to one plan. That’s the real advantage of adding uplighting to a DJ package instead of adding another vendor to your day.

Want to see what your venue looks like lit properly? Check our packages and pricing or get in touch — tell us your venue and we’ll tell you honestly whether uplighting will earn its keep there.

Montana Wedding Entertainment — wedding DJ, MC, lighting and photo booth across Montana. Call 406-396-8499 or get an instant quote.