Lighting up paper Lanterns

Has anyone had lit up lanterns, or have any experience with them?

Here you go!

http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-2010-lighting-paper-lanterns

I just went to put in a link to the article I wrote, and found Shana R. already had. Apparently, I'm famous! ;-)

2d Bride, This post is flagged and tagged in my bookmarks. It's probably one of the most helpful links I've found on PW. FS is already gearing up to gaffer tape the LED lights!

Ive already read that website, Im mainly just wondering if I can get these from a store (Walmart, Kmart, Radio Shack), where is it cheapest to buy them??? Can you use any kind of LED, or do you have to use the throwies?

I just clicked on the website that is on that website and I guess, I will be going with buy-leds-online.com (Thanks!) Another question for you guys is.. I am having red lanterns, my ceiling is low, so how many should I need in them, I dont want a pink effect though.

2D Bride mentioned where to get LEDs and batteries in her post.

http://buy-leds-online.com/index.html - to buy the LEDs

From the post:

CR-2032 lithium coin-sized batteries, one for each LED light. We got the batteries from CheapBatteries.com. On the second order of batteries, I figured out that we could bring CheapBatteries.com's price down by getting it to price match eBay seller Chi Wing LED product shop.

@Angel M., what you want is a 10 mm. superbright diffuse LED. The 10 mm. and superbright are so it will be large/bright enough. The diffuse is so that it will give an overall glow, rather than just pinpoints of light. If you are getting white ones, you want "warm white"; regular white has a bluish color.

In theory, you could get them from anywhere, if they meet those three criteria. However, I found that the ones from Buy LEDs Online seemed to be brighter than others. ("Superbright" may mean different things to different companies.) It was also one of the least expensive. I found a few on eBay that were slightly less expensive, but their lights didn't seem to be as bright.

(cont.)

For the batteries, I'd recommend CheapBatteries.com. Their batteries were reliable, and they ship quickly. They will also match any other price you can find for the batteries.

I didn't personally try any of the local stores. You could check them out, and see whether they are less expensive, and whether the lights are bright enough.

Don't worry about the "throwies" part. I won't get into the whole history of throwies, but suffice it to say that a throwie also includes a magnet, which is completely unnecessary if you are using it to light a paper lantern. Because the first person to use them for paper lanterns got the idea from actual throwies, the paper lantern ones are often referred to as throwies--which has half the brides out there wondering what they are supposed to do with the magnets.

If you are using red LEDs and don't want them to look pink, you may want to put red LEDs instead of white ones in them. That would make them a deeper red, and also avoid the slightly blue color that normal white LEDs have.

As for how many, that depends on a) how big your lanterns are, and b) how bright you want them to be. We used six LEDs in each of our 10" lanterns. For the 18" lanterns, we didn't like the level of light we could get with LEDs, so we went a different direction with those. I know a lot of brides just used two or three LEDs in the smaller lanterns.

I'm sorry, in my last post, first sentence should have started, "If you are using red paper lanterns and don't want them to look pink."

Here is the level of light we got with 6 LEDs in a 10" lantern.

Ok, thank you 2nd Bride, that answers almost all my questions. Except I still need to know how many a red lantern would need on a low ceiling, here is what Im talking about...hope they are good enough to know exactly what im saying.

http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/search/processRequest.do?Ntt=red lanterns&requestURI=searchMain&Ntk=all&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&N=0

Ok, thanks. we must have posted at the same time.

Yeah. I'd use 6 LEDs, but others have used fewer; it just depends on how bright you want them to be.

Well, I will be having plenty of candles on every table. So, I probably wont need much light from them, just enough to light up the room more (near the ceiling), and dance floor.

Yes, unless you have electrical cords that plug in, the light will be more of a glow than a way to light up the room. Here is a picture of some of ours in action.

Yep, thats all that i will need.

I definitely loved ours! We started putting them up when the room lights were still high. Then when they turned down the lights, it all looked really magical. And trust me, if they could make our venue look good, they could make any venue look good. Here's a picture of our venue at normal times.

My venue is a civic center, but im pretty sure it will look beautiful when im done. Alot of ppl have been using it recently for their weddings.