How to Organise the Perfect Sparkler Send-Off for Your Wedding
As your wedding day comes to an end, it’s always a fun idea to leave in style with wedding sparkles! It’s the perfect way to get some beautiful photos at the end of the night and get all of your guests involved. Before you start planning your sparkler exit, there are a few things you need to think about:
1. Discuss it with the Venue and Your Photographer
A sparkler exit can happen very quickly and you need a bit of preparation to perfect it. You want your photographer to be ready with the right lens and lighting to capture the moment in the best way. It’s therefore, really important to talk to your photographer and your venue to be sure that everyone is on the same page for the sparkler exit. From the photographer’s perspective, it’s important to know about the exit to make sure it is included in the timeline and they can prepare for it! From the venue, you want to be sure they allow it as some venues can have rules regarding this and suggestions for such an exit. This conversation should take place before the wedding day. I’ve seen it where a couple has planned an exit, spent the money on sparklers only to find out the day of that the venue doesn’t allow it, so be sure to find out their rules before planning!
2. Buy Big & Good Quality Sparklers
Bigger sparklers burn for longer, which means you get more time to enjoy your sparkler send-off. It also means your photographer will have more time to document the exit. Also, not all sparklers are made equal. Some of the cheaper examples you can buy online are of poor quality, meaning they produce far less light, smoke a lot and even smell terrible, so remember to purchase the good quality ones!
3. Buy More than you Need
Photographers love lighting and the more sparklers, the better your photos can turn out! Instead of one sparkler per guest, you can opt-in for one in each hand, which makes the scene much more romantic with more warm-ish light in the dark.
4. Test the Sparklers before your Big Day
It's always a good idea to test the sparklers before your big-day to check their quality and make sure they don't smoke a lot or smell bad! You can purchase a pack to test out before purchasing in bulk for all of your guests.
5. Don’t Forget Lighters
One thing that often gets overlooked is how quickly you need to get everyone’s sparklers lit. There’s no point buying extra long sparklers if all your guests will be fumbling around with matches for three minutes! So a good idea would be to order some sparkler flares which light several sparklers very quickly and this way, everyone’s sparklers will (hopefully) be lit at the same time.
6. Timing your Exit
When planning a sparkler exit, timing can be super important. One piece of advice I give my clients is to consider doing their sparkler send-off in the evening before everyone is drunk. Generally, the more drunk people get, the harder it would be to organise the send-off so doing the sparkler exit earlier in the evening means it's not really a 'send-off' but it's still a lot of fun!
7. Organising People
Discuss with your photographer beforehand how you want guests arranged so he/she could help with organising people on the day. You can have two long lines of guests for you to run through or a big group of people with sparklers around you. From a photographer's perspective, both of these look great and it is up to you as the couple to decide how you would like to do it. The traditional way of doing it would be two long lines, but a large group of people all around gives off vast amounts of warm, soft light and probably lends itself to more visually stunning images.
8. Finally
Do keep everything above in mind when planning your sparkler send-off, but when it comes to it on the day, just enjoy it and have fun! It’s really easy to get caught up in managing everything that you can forget to enjoy yourself, so don't forget to enjoy and have fun because this way, your guests will enjoy it too!
