What You Need to Know About Wedding Sparklers
Many couples choose to have a wedding sparkler exit instead of bubbles or glow sticks and most today forgo the birdseed option from decades ago, today, I’d like to share with you great reasons why having a sparkler exit is best for the end of your wedding day and how to go use them.
It’s Picture Perfect
By far the number one reason is that it makes for great video and images from your wedding videographer and wedding photographer.
Because most sparklers offer a great color temperature for imagery, they also provide additional light for the evening helping to “set the mood”, when your videographer tosses up an additional light for the couple, you can get some truly amazing media!
Wedding Guests Give a Proper Sendoff
Wedding guests get to participate in seeing the couple off into the night, although truthfully in 2022, many couples opt for a “mock” exit or send off and that’s for a couple of reasons.
Having an early sendoff helps those with younger children and older guests go home early while still being able to participate in the wedding day activities. It’s a way to allow those who can’t stay out until 10 pm or later to go home sooner
It helps with the wedding media, with many couples choosing an early exit, there is still enough light to help with those wedding images and wedding videos.
It also saves money. As your photographer and videographer will get to leave after the wedding exit, it saves the couple a few hours of paying them to hang around and wait until the exit happens. In fact, some couples can save upwards of $500-$700 just by having the wedding exit a couple of hours early.
In fact, roughly 42% of couples will have an early “mock exit” for their wedding guests, which compared to 2001, more couples are opting for this early, fake exit.
Number of Couples Having Fake Exits
The Types of Sparklers are Important
While some people suggest that 4th of July sparklers work great, they generally don’t.
Perhaps the most notable difference between wedding sparklers and regular sparklers is size, and more importantly, timing.
Wedding exits are magical, but with the wrong sparklers, they can turn into a disaster.
Regular sparklers are typically about 8-10” inches long and last for about 20 seconds, which isn’t long enough.
18”-20” are generally the best as they will last 45-60 seconds or more, which is more than enough time to do an exit a couple of times for the photographer and videographer, a couple of passes.
Don’t buy the 36” sparklers because they tend to break apart after about 40 seconds, leaving some of the sparklers to fall on the ground and they generally burn far longer after the exit, so they are not needed in most wedding applications.
How you light them is very important too.
Because these things are high-temperature burning, more than 2,000+ degrees, a typical lighter or BBQ lighter will have a hard time getting them going.
Instead, use a butane torch that burns hotter than a lighter and effectively gets them going faster.
In order to have the fastest sparkler lighting with a group of guests, light every other sparkler in the row and have a separate torch light for each row.
Then, have the other guests light their sparklers by touching the ones that are lit, this will go by much faster and allow for more time with the images and video.
Best Way to Pose with Wedding Sparklers
If you want to stay safe and make great wedding media, it’s best for guests to stand 10ft apart from each other, giving the couple more than enough space to walk down the aisle that is created by the guests.
Most people tend to stand much closer together and it can cause safety issues should the couple get lit by accident.
In this gif, the guests were too close together and the bride’s hair caught fire at the end, if the guests were further apart, this would not have happened.
Make sure that your guests are far enough apart from each other.
The other thing that your guests will need to do is to hold them at a 45-degree angle, much like a military sword-style sendoff. This will also help ensure that the couple doesn't get burned by the extreme heat that these things produce.
Best Way to Dispose of Sparklers
Yes, there is a way to properly put out sparklers and it involves a bucket of some type with water. After sparklers are finished, they can still be very hot, so you need to make sure that you have a place to put them in after the exit.
Metal buckets are best if you can get one (Amazon sells them btw), fill it about halfway with water to get the heat off them
Don’t place them on the ground for a couple of reasons
First, the heat could create a fire on the grass or nearby greenery on the ground
Second, animals could find the remains and chew on the metal rods, the residue is poisonous to them, so avoid tossing them on the ground.
Some Venues Provide This Service For You
Ask your wedding venue if this is a service that is included in your wedding package or one that they can add to it. Since venues should have liability insurance, many of them will follow the guidelines from the insurance company, using select, approved sparklers from various vendors.
Silver Hearth Lodge for example offers this service, so you don’t have to worry about buying the right kinds, buying the torches, or dealing with the cleanup afterward.
Places to Get Sparklers
If your wedding venue doesn’t offer this as a service, there are a few places that you can purchase them online and we have a small list of them that I’ve used in the past with great success.
Sparklers.us 20”
VIP Sparklers 20”
Having guests play a role in keeping the couple safe is a very important piece of the wedding exit and I always encourage people to be mindful when it comes to playing with these things as they can be harmful.
Exits can be a fun enjoyable moment for all involved, just make sure that safety is atop the list when it comes to doing them at your own wedding.
