Fairy lights

Hi FutureMrsMarshall,

I've ordered a bunch of battery powered LEDs from eBay. They do them in all different colours, dirt cheap from China, most take 3xAA batteries.

We've ordered 20 sets for our DIY centre-pieces - they cost 1.37 each for the 2metre ones - and I got 3 packs of 30 cheap AA batteries from the pound shop (as they're LED they don't draw much power so the batteries should last the day at least). They took about 3 weeks to arrive in the post, but the postage was free

We went to a wedding in the summer and the couple bought a bunch of these and just wrapped them around beams outside etc and it looked really pretty once the sun went down

The ones we bought are eBay item number ****. They're microwire ones, so you can bend them into all sorts of shapes and they stay better than the christmas light type ones. They're like little grains of rice on a silver wire.

Hope this helps

I'm thinking something similar for our marquee but I think the venue may have issues with me using anything unless it's PAT tested. So I got a quote from an events company just to see what kind of pricing I was looking at. For 4 strings of fairy lights they wanted £400!!!

Hi Bekalina,

Battery powered items don't require PAT testing So you can save yourself a huge chunk with some fairy lights from eBay! They do 10 meter strings for about a fiver!

Thanks Trixie, if I can get lights long enough then that's the route I will definitely be taking!

Those "rice" ones do look interesting I have a few wedding couples this year in the same situ with regards to power.

I will look forward to your full review ?.

What I will say though is with china watch out for the delivery times, leave plenty of time. Also the stiff single wire may be more prone to snap than the normal stranded wire with a lot of bending back and forth, but should last a wedding.

I think that the 10m might be mains power via an adapter. Doesn't add up that 3 batts can power 1m as well as 10m. Unless its 3 batts will power 1m for 10 hours BUT in that case the same 3 batts will power 10m for just 1 hour.

May need looking into a bit more

Perfectly doable if wrapping around the columns/beams - I would actually check with friends and family if they have any lights first before buying them loads of people have clear white lights we did this and only had to buy 1 light curtain.

If you have a friend who is a sparky even if another half of a friend or family then can PAT test cheaply for you.

I think you need the lightning company

I used the 10m battery ones, they lasted the whole 24 hours they were on, not tried them since! I had the normal wire ones (rather than the rice ones) for beams / pillars. But did use the rice style ones around mini Christmas trees-all were good!

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I think you can totally handle the fairy lights yourself if you enjoy diy projects, especially since your barn already has plenty of power sockets. For the courtyard and garden, battery powered fairy lights work well as long as you choose good quality ones that last several hours, but you can mix them with a few plug in strands using safe outdoor extension cords if needed. When we decorated a similar setup, we used a mix of both options and everything stayed lit all night. It is kind of like choosing a Bosch high performance battery Sharjah for a car, the better the quality the less you stress about things dying early. If you want a stress free wedding day or more complex lighting, a lighting company can help, but diy is definitely doable.

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