Event Production in Santa Barbara

Live music suits Santa Barbara's open-air settings. A violinist can carry a ceremony on a bluff or between the vines, a saxophone player can set the tone for cocktail hour, and a singer can take the first dance. Later in the night, a sax, a live drummer or a full live band plays with the DJ, so the energy keeps climbing instead of starting over.

Santa Barbara weddings often stretch across a weekend and across a property — a welcome dinner, a ceremony facing the ocean or the vineyards, then a reception that moves under a tent as the coastal air cools. We plan the music and the MC for each moment, keep every vendor on one timeline, and bring the sound and lighting that turn a lawn, a barn or a courtyard into a dance floor.

Estates, ranches and wineries rarely come with production built in, so we bring it: sound that carries across the party but not across the neighborhood, wireless microphones for speeches, uplighting and moving heads for the evening, and truss and a stage where the program needs one. In a full production, the DJ, AV, LED, lighting and staging are designed together and run by one crew.

Between the ocean light and the wine-country hills, Santa Barbara gives a photographer a great deal to work with. When photography and video are part of the same production, they follow one run of show: portraits and candids, the vows and every toast, a highlight film, and a livestream for anyone who could not make the trip. A 360 booth or premium photo booth adds the guests' own view of the night.

At a Santa Barbara event, an LED wall earns its place by carrying something personal — a monogram over the dance floor, photos during dinner, a live camera feed that brings the toasts to every table, or a company's content at a retreat. We bring LED screens for inside or out, with an operator to run them, and, when the design calls for it, an LED dance floor with a DJ booth to match; each screen is chosen for the space and its sightlines.

Taking a Jewish wedding to the coast or the vineyards should never mean trading away tradition. DJ Gilad Emesh was born in Israel and performs at these weddings himself, switching between Hebrew and English at the mic — from the processional and the Chuppah to the glass, into a Hora that draws in the grandparents and the cousins alike, then Israeli, Mizrahi and Persian sets woven through the dancing. Add a live drummer and the Hora gets louder still.

Leadership retreats, client dinners and company celebrations come to Santa Barbara for the setting. We provide what turns a dinner into an event and a meeting room into a session — presenter microphones and sound, LED screens with your content, lighting and staging — and a DJ for the reception or the party that follows.

Whether it is a relaxed ranch party or a polished ballroom evening, a Santa Barbara Bar or Bat Mitzvah is built around the guest of honor: their entrance, their candle-lighting moments set to music and photos, their friends competing in games and dance-offs, and a Hora big enough for the whole family.