How to Hang String Lights for a Bistro for a Wedding [+video] (2024)

So now is the time to inspect the bulbs and make sure that every single one of them is working because the worst thing that could happen is you raise it up and there’s a bulb out. You know what’s going on guys, it’s Diedrich Webb. Welcome back to the website in today’s article I’m gonna be showing you guys how I do string bulb lighting cuz if you guys haven’t seen I do a lot of glass string bulb lighting we have a lot of projects that are supposed to be coming up this year we’ll see how that works out but excuse the mess that’s in the garage right now it might look a little organized but I’m working on a lot of projects right now during this off time trying to stay busy so like over here is some of the stuff I’m working on a big installation project a lot of stuff’s coming for that amp speakers and stuff that we’re gonna put into the venue you guys have seen the ceremony rack well you guys have seen the ceremony rack well you guys haven’t seen the second article that I’ll be coming out in the ceremony rack when I show you guys my totes and all my labeling I’ve been doing and stuff like that I picked up 24 new up lights, these are battery powered, a Yeah, just in case everyone asks, I’ll link them down in the description down below these are the exact same ones that Joe bun has Joe has like a hundred of these so far after unboxing and everything super satisfied but I’m doing product testing to see how long they like the battery lasts and stuff consistency between them and stuff like that but other than that just really been working on my labeling getting stuff labeled that labels fall off I am doing a complete equipment walkthrough of the garage.

I’m going to film that sometime in the next week because I have nothing else to do, but we’re doing string bulb lighting so let me show you what we’re using so first things first with string bulb lighting you need a support system to hang the lights from so I use these big-ass mega heavy-ass base plates down here these are quarter-inch thick steel they are extremely heavy they weigh 70 something pounds All of this is from Georgia Expo, and if 70 pounds isn’t enough weight, I throw a 30 pound rubber weight that’s back there on top of this to give me a hundred pounds of weight at the base, so I’m gonna go ahead and set these up out here alright so the poles are set up on either side right here I’ll pan out and get a bigger shot for you guys but uh I went ahead and took my little rolling I’d say for a setup like this with this amount of weight with one base plate and one rubber and then the pole about 50 feet 40 to 50 feet about the farthest I’d take this might be able to go a little bit more especially with some more like rubber weights or some sandbags that for only but that’s about the safe range that I guess so now that the bases are set up let’s talk about how we’re gonna actually hang the lights from pole to pole all right so The other advantage of having a Phillips screwdriver is that when you’re running different lengths of runs, your wire is going to be a little bit long, so you have to pull back a little bit so now I’m going to be attaching our wire to the poles so like I mentioned, I’m gonna take the initial loop here and I’m basically going to clip it on and now we’re gonna go over to the other pole as you guys can see here my wire is significantly longer and I could run all four together or in a scenario where we have like three or four runs coming off this so we got 50 feet that way if I keep that weight at 50 feet that way 50/50 that way I would just run an outlet box up here and plug them all in, so that is something you need to consider. Power wise, you can only hook four of these up and end which is a little bit of a bummer and does cause a little bit of a headache but like I said it’s not that big of a deal especially when these are so cheap so again these will be linked in the description down below they do have clips on all of these so they just kind of clip onto the wire one thing to consider is the first clip you do make sure you clip it on the outside of the loop I’ll s I have like 20 or 30 strands right now and another 20 coming so I have overkill of these lights so now we move on to raising these poles up and basically you want to do this in an alternating fashion so you want to raise this side by about 2 feet and then raise that side about 2 feet and then that side and that side until you get to the height that you want these poles right here are from Georgia Expo as I mentioned and ignore the fact that 12 feet in the air on the poles let me get the tape measure but I believe in the center it is like 9 foot I don’t think you guys can actually tell but that’s 9 foot in the air so this right here as I measured is drooping down to 9 feet in the center at the lowest point basically now this is a little bit loose I could have tightened up those cables just a little bit more to bring this up probably to about nine and a half feet but Those wires will rip out in between the bulbs and crash down on you, so run that steel wire so that it handles all of the load some additional points on the wires coming down the poles obviously you want black wires so that they’re hidden but like I mentioned gaff tape your wire multiple times going up the pole I got one at the top and one at the bottom I’d probably put one in the middle too if I was doing this legitimately at an event I’ll link everything that I used, like the little dimmer packs and all that, in the description down below, so if you guys want to get into this, you can check it out as well. I will say straight up though, the one thing that is not cheap is the bulbs, the wire that’s pretty cheap, that’s pretty cheap to get into, but what’s expensive is those base plates and those poles, so with the poles and bases costing the majority of the money, I kind of have to price it out based on how many feet of string bulb lighting and how many bases and how many poles I have to bring to an event, so just to give you guys a rough number. I’m charging about $20 per 25 foot strand of lights that I have to bring now this is considering that we’re doing more than just one strand one strand of string bulb lighting I’m not going to do 25 bucks it’s going to be a minimum of a hundred dollars to do string bulb lighting no matter what that’s just a little factor in there with the fact that I have to travel I have to have labor It’s me and Eric’s new podcast we’ve been talking about it a little bit but we already have a couple episodes up there we’re gonna do it kind of semi-monthly like a couple times a month or once or twice a month but yeah go check out the DG like podcast if you want to see me and Eric sit down and talk for literally like an hour on a topic and if you have any topics let us know as well but don’t forget to like.

Q&A – 💬