Sound and light for an evening, with my partner

There is one thing I do not do, and I would rather write it down plainly: I do not rent out any PA system and I do not rig stage lighting. It is not my trade, and pretending otherwise would show on the night. When an evening calls for a real rig, I work with VLK Events in Lyon. It is a partnership, not a sublet: their gear is not in my catalogue and it will not be.

What a rig really requires

It is never the number of speakers that causes trouble. It is time, power and someone who stays. The rig takes hours to build before the guests arrive, and it comes down at an hour when nobody wants to be there. You need a power supply that holds the load, which rules out the extension lead run from the kitchen. And you need a technician on site during the evening, because a desk that drops out at eleven cannot be fixed over the phone.

A barn wedding, 110 guests. Photo: © VLK Events.

What VLK Events brings

Speakers, lighting and a technician on site. The VLK Events team builds evenings in and around Lyon: barn weddings, birthdays in halls, open-air festivals over several days. The three photographs in this article are theirs, and they say better than I can what a serious rig does to the look of a room.

An open-air festival: two stages, three days. Photo: © VLK Events.

One contact, and nothing booked

You do not put together two files and you do not wait for two quotes. You tick the “sound and light rig” box in the request, and I coordinate by hand, job by job. Ticking that box books nothing and commits nobody: it is an intention, which we discuss before the quote goes out. If Valentin is not free that night, I tell you rather than keep you waiting.

A 400-guest birthday party, under a marquee. Photo: © VLK Events.

And if you rig the evening yourself

It is very doable for a party of reasonable size, and the rental catalogue exists for that: a controller and turntables, with the room’s sound system still to be arranged on your side. The real traps are documented on the sound blog — choosing your PA for a wedding for volume and room size, sound for an outdoor party with no mains for power, and sound gear outdoors for garden parties. If reading them makes you think that is a lot to handle alongside your own party, that is exactly when to tick the box.