An LDS cultural hall doesn’t start out looking like a wedding venue (unless you’re having a basketball themed reception), but with the right layout, lighting, music, and timeline, you can make a church gym wedding look really nice and create a real celebration.
Usually you can transform a church cultural hall for an affordable price at a fraction of the cost of an event center.
Before / After LDS Cultural Hall Decoration Pictures
I don’t recommend trying to put up the lights and drapes last! The Elders quorum loves to put out tables and chairs for you the night before a reception, and the Relief Society loves to help setup early as well, but if you’re going to put up lights or other hanging decorations, you’ll have to move ladders in between all the other decorations. Work from the top down to simplify decorating.
Also, don’t forget to make room for the DJ table 🙂
Here are my 5 tips for making a wedding reception amazing in a ward cultural hall.
- Have an Overall Vision
- Transform the Cultural Hall into an Event Venue
- Determine the Layout and Flow
- Plan for DJ, Sound and Energy
- Prepare a Timeline and Guest Experience
Ok, let’s breakdown the five areas of planning a great wedding reception in a ward cultural hall. These same tips will work well for most event centers and other reception locations.
In this post I’m going to assume that you are doing the decorations and planning yourself. A good wedding planner will help with most of these details (that’s what they get paid for), but it’s totally possible to do it yourself. (My wife and I did it ourselves for our wedding.) Even if you were to go to an event center that handles a lot of these details, you still have to think about what you want and make choices. I hope this post can inform through those choices.
1. Overall Vision to Make an LDS Reception Feel Elegant
Start With the Right Mindset
A cultural hall starts out plain, but it doesn’t have to feel cheap, awkward, or unfinished. You can transform a cultural hall into an amazing dreamscape, it all starts with your vision.
You may need to change your mindset to embrace a cultural hall reception.
There are lots of good reasons to have your reception at a church building:
- Having your reception in a cherished space
- Making your reception close to the people who will come – having the right people to celebrate with really helps you enjoy yourself
- Churches are a nice place to hold events that are usually available on Friday and Saturday nights. If you are having a reception on another night, you’ll have to coordinate around youth and stake events
- Saving money – your reception can be affordable, especially at home or at a church cultural hall
Reminding yourself of these reasons to have your reception in a ward cultural hall helps you be happy with the outcome.
Use a Simple, Clean Color Palette
Too many colors can make the room feel chaotic. A focused palette makes even simple decor look more polished.
You can start by finding a bridesmaids dress, ribbon, or fake flowers that are similar to the color you want. This lets you build your color palette from something that you know you can actually get.
Here are some tools to help you come up with a color palette for your wedding reception:
- Canva’s color palette generator – useful if you have an inspiration photo, bouquet photo, dress color, or other image to pull colors from it
- Adobe Color Wheel – try split complementary and drag to the center for lighter shades
- Coolers.co – a fast general color palette generator that’s good for testing color combinations quickly
If you’re not a designer, ask a friend who has a good eye for design. But your goal doesn’t need to be to make the cultural as chic as possible, you’re just finding something you’ll always be happy with.
Before you buy decorations, spend a little time browsing wedding reception ideas on Instagram or Pinterest so you can choose a simple look instead of randomly collecting decorations that don’t work together.
Determining your color palette early helps you focus on a coordinated look. Some people call your wedding colors the ‘theme’ of your wedding reception, but your theme might include colors or it might be more abstract like ‘Country Wedding’.
Either way, organizing your decorations around a simple color palette can help everything feel more intentional. Your color palette will be used throughout the cultural hall, from table linens, table runners, floral arrangements, ribbons, and napkins to larger flower arrangements, signage, and other small details throughout the reception.
If you include your color palette on your wedding invitations and coordinate the bridesmaids’ dresses, the groom’s and groomsmen’s neckties, parents’ outfits, bouquets, boutonnieres, and other wedding party details, people will start to notice the style of your wedding before they even walk into the reception.
Create One Strong Focal Point
Make the head table, backdrop, cake table, or dance area feel intentional instead of decorating every wall equally.
If you want the dance area to be a focal point, I have lighting that can be customized to match your wedding colors. More on lighting below…
2. LDS Cultural Hall Transformation
These are the visual changes that make the cultural hall feel more like a reception venue.
Use Lighting Before Decorations
Uplighting, string lights, and dimmed overhead lights can change the room faster than almost anything else. Also, they probably need to be installed before everything else.
First, turn off the overhead fluorescent gym lights. They are what makes it feel most like a basketball court.
If there are dimmable lights in the ceiling, find where the switches are. Many buildings hide the controls away in a locked closet or cabinet.
Changing from fluorescent to warm can lights will be one of the biggest differences in the atmosphere of the room and it immediately gives people a different feeling than on Elders Quorum basketball nights.
Next, add more lighting. If you want small bulbs, decide if you want warm yellowish bulbs or lights that are more bluish and cold. It usually doesn’t work well to mix the two. Use either all warm lighting or else if you want your lighting to feel like stars in a dark sky you can go with cold lighting.
Choose whether you want to also add colored lighting to the space. I love to match the DJ lights to your wedding colors.
If there currently aren’t hooks around the upper perimeter of the cultural hall to hang lights on, generations of people will thank you if you install some. Just make sure they are high enough that draped lights aren’t so low that teenage boys (and men who are still teenage boys at heart) aren’t trying to jump and touch them all night.
You’ll definitely need some step ladders for the decorating. Many ward cultural halls – especially stake centers – already have ladders in a closet. You may need a key for these closets as well. Make sure you add these upper lights before any tables are put in place.
Use white extension cords and/or find other ways to hide your cords.
DJs usually already have dance lights, which are great for a dance, but they don’t have to be on all the time. Many DJs have other lighting packages besides just dance lights. Up-lighting looks great against walls or drapes and is what the professionals use.
Lighting different areas that have different purposes with different lights helps inform guests of the room flow. More on room flow below.
Hide the Gym Feeling Where It Matters Most
Focus on basketball hoops, wall padding, stage clutter, folded tables, and visible storage areas.
If you can crank the basketball hoops up to the ceiling, do it. If you need to hang a wire on them first to be used for draping other lights or ceiling drapes, figure that out first before doing other decorations.
Some wall padding looks fine in a cultural hall. Drapes can cover the walls, which adds to your total cost, although it definitely transforms the room.
If there is a stage curtain, close it (at least partially). Think about whether kids will be running around on the stage the whole night and if that matters to you or might matter to your grandparents. (Kids love to run around on a stage, but some people don’t like that so much.) You might want to put the DJ up there and partially close the curtain. Or you could put your wedding cake table or other highlight on the stage and prevent access.
Use Draping Carefully
Draping can help, but too much can look messy or homemade if it is not installed cleanly.
You could pay a decorating company to handle just the drapery and/or lighting if it is too much to handle.
3. Cultural Hall Reception Layout and Flow
Plan the Room Layout Like an Event Space
Tables, gift table, guest book, line flow (if you have a reception line), food, dance floor, and DJ placement should guide people naturally.
Make the Entrance Feel Welcoming
The first thing guests see sets the tone before they even enter the cultural hall. You might want a sign outside or in the foyer- think about the wind and rain/snow if it will be blowing your sign away and if people will know which of the three churches on the same street your reception is at.
Putting an archway or a decorated gift table and/or guestbook in the entry helps people know they’re in the right place. Make sure your names and pictures are visible before people even walk into the cultural hall.
Don’t Let the Refreshment Table Dominate the Room
Food is important, but it doesn’t need to visually take over the reception.
If you have servers, the food can be in the kitchen or serving area / three-in-one room, and then carried to the guests. Most receptions now skip on servers and have people serve themselves. You can still have someone serve food or drinks from those areas.
Make the Dance Floor Feel Inviting
Leave enough room, but not so much that the dance area feels empty or intimidating.
If your reception will have music throughout, and then a specific dance portion near the end of the reception, you can move tables if desired, but its easy to just leave some room for dancing, near the DJ table.
4. DJ, Sound, and Energy are Important Considerations in a Cultural Hall
If you aren’t hiring a DJ, look around for microphone jacks or other audio inputs. You’ll need to plug something into the church’s audio input jacks and someone will need to control the playlist. You might also need to separately plug in a microphone so someone can make announcements. Make sure there is a power outlet nearby as well.
Put the DJ in the Right Place
If you hire a DJ (book me!), they will bring their own speakers and sound equipment, but using the church’s audio is usually an OK backup solution. I DJ’d a reception in Mesa, Arizona with less than a day’s notice, without having any of my equipment with me, so luckily I was able to use the church’s sound system with an added mixer. Some church’s have small mixers on hand in the library or stake offices, others don’t.
The DJ should be near the dance floor, preferably right next to it. There should be enough room for at least 10-20 people to dance at a time.
The DJ should be visible enough to guide the event, but doesn’t need to be a focus until announcements are made or .
Think About Sound in a Gym
Cultural halls can echo, so speaker placement and microphone clarity matter.
Wireless microphones add a lot of flexibility for the DJ or whoever else might want to talk or sing at your reception to move around the room.
If someone is making an announcement or speech, make sure they don’t stand right in front of a speaker- that’s asking for screeching audio feedback.
Controlling the volume manually is important to prevent feedback, and to make sure the music and announcements are heard, but not overpowering.
Background music should let people talk casually without raising their voices. Dance music can be a bit louder, but should never drive anyone away and people should still be able to converse.
Use Music to Create Energy Early
Background music during mingling keeps the room from feeling quiet, awkward, or too casual.
Hey DJ, drop that beat!
If you have a dance portion of your reception, think about what music you want. Music should be about you and your tastes, but it can also be celebratory without driving people away.
See my post about what music works best for an LDS wedding reception in Utah.
5. Reception Timeline and Guest Experience
Make the night feel organized, intentional, and fun.
Have a Clear Reception Timeline
Each part of your night should be planned. You don’t have to stick exactly to the timeline, but first dance, cake cutting, bouquet toss, send-off, and open dancing should not feel random or forgotten.
See my post about How to Plan an LDS Wedding Reception Timeline in Utah.
Keep It Family-Friendly Without Making It Boring
An LDS cultural hall reception can still feel fun, classy, and energetic without inappropriate music.
See my post about How to Have a Fun Wedding Dance Without Inappropriate Music.
Summary: LDS Cultural Hall Wedding Receptions Can Be Amazing!
If you are looking to decorate an LDS cultural hall for your wedding reception, the goal is not to cover every inch of the church gym with cultural hall decorations. Instead, some smart planning will help your church wedding reception in a cultural hall feel warm, organized, family-friendly, and fun for your guests.
You can do it all yourself, but getting the right help and figuring out who is doing what (and when) is important to plan. Hiring a few vendors for certain things that you don’t want to handle will reduce your stress and add professionalism without costing as much as renting out an event center.
As a professional wedding DJ, I’m available to help with the parts of your reception that affect the flow and energy of the night, including music planning, announcements, microphone use, timeline coordination, dance floor lighting, and keeping the evening moving in a way that feels organized without feeling stiff.
