Outdoor Wedding Advice

[wesg]

Hey, guys!

 

I got roped into doing a small outdoor wedding ceremony, and was hoping for some advice on best practices re. mic'ing the ceremony itself.

 

My plan is to put a wireless lav on the padre and have a hand-held wireless at hand, for the vows and so on, riding faders through out. I imagine I will need cut everything below about 150Hz to eliminate wind noise (it's right on the water).

 

What's the best way to place the lav on the padre for good pickup? Should I try to get it up close to the top of his chest, or should I lower it a bit so I can use more gain and maybe hear the bride/groom?

 

Is there a preferred way to have the hand-held held for the couple? Give it to the best man to point it in the right place when the time comes? Have a stand in there? Get the officiant to hold it? Maybe I should spring for a second lav and put it on the groom?

 

PA itself will be straightforward, small mixer, DRPX, 2xJBL 712M on poles covering 80 people, 45' by 30' outdoor space.

 

Thanks for any advice!

 

Wes

[trevcda]

Have the hand held for a back up, but the bride will be holding a bouquet and the grooms hands and both are usually otherwise too occupied with their hands to be working with a hand held mic. Unless of course you've rehearsed it with them ahead of time. The hand held is great for readings and the like by people other than the B&G and Padre.

 

Don't forget a windscreen for both the handheld and the lav mics. I generally place the lav on the officiant's chest low enough to hopefully help equalize the distance from everyone speaking without ending up behind anything. Other people have had luck running a mic through the sleeve and down by the officiant's wrist, but I always seem to end up mic'ing the turning of pages more than anything else.

 

At the end of the day, the bride and groom will both mumble their lines and you'll need to ride the levels between them and the priest, almost always near the verge of feedback. A compressor, especially with all that potential wind, will just end up pumping. Unless you have time to fiddle with it, I wouldn't bother. You are correct on the high pass. You'll still be battling the wind (loudest sound to the mic wins always) but taking some of the rumble out will help.

 

Remember to keep you speakers separated far enough so the photographers sight lines of the main event don't include large orange badges.

[Mike M]

What I do:

One wireless lav mic with windscreen.

The officiant will be reading from text in a folder/binder.

Clip the lav mic to the folder (at the top of the crease, where the pages meet at the binding) thus the mic will be in between the officiant and the couple .

Put the lav transmitter in officiant's pocket.

The mic will pick up the officiant's words and when he turns to each of the couple for vows, the mic will pick up his words and those of the bride/groom.

Works-like-a-charm for me 100% of the time.

 

The only time there has been an issue is when a videographer also put a lav on the officiant and placed his lav pack in the same pocket as mine.....my lav's sound started breaking-up....it was working properly prior to the addition of the videographer's unit....grrrrrr.

 

 

 

 

[wesg]

Thanks! Great advice in here. I never thought about windscreens for the lavs -- this makes perfect sense. Wind will definitely be a problem, they don't call us the Freshwater Sailing Capital of the World for nothing.

 

I think I'll order up two omni lavs from the rental company, give myself some options, along with the wireless handheld, of course.

 

Should I be doing anything special with the speaker tripods if they are on a slightly-sloping lawn? Other than fully extending the poles, and carrying appropriate liability insurance, that is.

 

Wes

 

[trevcda]

Should I be doing anything special with the speaker tripods if they are on a slightly-sloping lawn? Other than fully extending the poles' date=' and carrying appropriate liability insurance, that is. [/quote']

 

Crooked poles drive me nuts. Especially if they're next anything else standing upright and plumb that shows how off center they really are. If there are no rocks/bricks readily available in the area, I'd bring something with me to allow me to even them out. Firstly because they'll be more stable, especially if it's windy and they start oscillating on the stand. Second because when they show up in pictures they'll look better.

 

Ultimate Support has a speakers stand with a leveling leg for this exact scenario. If you are going to be doing more gigs like this and are in the market for new tripods, they would be worth looking into:

 

http://www.ultimatesupport.com/ts-99bl.html

 

 

 

[wesg]

Wow! I had no idea those existed. $170 each is not unreasonable, either, given that they are lift-assist. If I can start doing this kind of work regularly, I will definitely be getting a set, as I have been looking for lift-assist poles anyhow. I have almost hurt myself a couple times now lifting speakers on my own.

 

I'm hoping I can set up on the level-ish walkway, but won't know for sure until the day of. I'm trying to figure out if I can get away with the speakers behind the microphones or not. The speakers will wind up being about 30 feet apart, as I'm covering a width of about 45 feet. With the wedding party in the middle, I hope I can get away with this without feedback concerns.

 

Any suggestions for levelers if I need them? Small patio stones? Large interlocking pavers? Those are about the size of dinner plates, I'd expect decent stability.

 

Wes

[RoadRanger]

Squares of plywood painted black has always been the "go to" cheaparse solution .

[wesg]

Thanks, RoadRanger! That's a good idea. I should probably go out and buy a sheet of 1/2" plywood and a can of paint. How big do you usually make sure your squares? 12"? 18"?

 

Rental company has offered to lend me shims and sandbags, which I will take them up on. Hopefully I will be able to avoid using them. Have to admit, I'm not 100% sure what to do with sandbags. I guess you flop them over the tripod feet.

 

Wes

[wesg]

Update -- gig was a resounding success. Thanks to all for the advice.

 

I wound up putting a lav on the padre and groom mid-chest. The bride and groom faced each other under an arch, with the padre about 4 feet away from them for most of the ceremony. I had planned to use the book trick, but it would not have worked with this guy's style (wide open arms, singing, then reading, and moving about a fair bit). The audio was great, although I was riding right at the edge of feedback for the bride's vows. Readers used the hand-held, as did a singer who supplied a backing track.

 

Speaker placement was a bit of a challenge, I managed to not set up on a slope, since they moved the location of the wedding by 30 or 40 feet since my walk-through. This meant that I had to do a sort of side-wash from the front corners, as there wasn't any place else for them. Two PRX712 on sticks. I wanted to re-angle the far speaker at one point to try and improve GBF but was too occupied babysitting the mixer to risk it.

 

The rental company supplied Rhode lavalier mics that can stab through the shirt. VERY convenient. Hand-held and belt packs were AKG UHF units. They performed flawlessly and sounded great.

 

Wind noise wasn't much of an issue; I elected to go without sock on the lavs since the rental company provided furry ones and they would have looked funny with the placement I chose. Time was also tight, as I had a laptop hard disk failure and I had to source and setup another computer in time for the 2pm ceremony. ARGH. What I did was cut a lot of low end with the DRPX GEQ on the mains and then boost the low end on the music player channel. Not ideal, but the mixer for this system was a bit limited (I also had the band set up, so the big board was unavailable). Then I rode the low freq channel strip knob on the padre and thinned out his voice whenever the wind picked up. I doubt anybody noticed.

 

As I had been anticipating a sloped area for the PA speakers, I brought a stack of shims and got some sandbags from the rental company. The sandbags proved useful in the band area, it was so windy there the tents kept jumping around. These were saddle-style sandbags, and wow, they area great. I need to get some.

 

Wes