Hi All

I made myself a custom portable lectern today to make wedding speeches easier!! We have venues here without lecterns and they normally do speeches with a handheld mic and I have a lighting stand with a lav mic and transmitter clipped to the top. However speakers tend to move around and the lav soon gets out of range and it’s also hard to keep them in the field of view too!!!

With a simple aluminium frame covered in composite board and attached to the lighting stand thru a ball head I have a much neater lectern and it tends to keep people in one place too!!!

Basically half is for the person’s speech documents and the other half is for the AKG boundary layer mic which has a much better range than a lav mic!! I have a aluminium strip on half the lectern so your speech notes don’t slide off onto the floor and that also stops people putting notes on top of the mic!!!! Inside the top frame is also a bracket to clip the transmitter onto.

Chris

Hmm, food for thought there, Chris..
My wife is a Marriage Celebrant here in Newcastle, NSW. She likes to use the hand held mic, hates the "Madona" mic.
Might have to run that one past her!

Chris it's a good idea but you will need to make a bit more professional looking, still a work in progress I gather. I go via the wireless handheld mic provided by the DJ with my Zoom H4n, I also provide the DJ with a proper wireless mic if he doesn't have one. In worst case scenarios like power failure I will have the MC mic every speaker with my wireless lav mic before they speak.

Hi guys

The top still has to be finished in white laminate of course. Wherever possible I do prefer a fixed position otherwise you are trying to follow a drunk best man who is nervously pacing left and right across the dance floor showing off...not easy when you run two cams on your own!! Normally all our venues have lecterns and house systems which keep the person in one spot which makes it a lot easier for the fixed camera!!

Actually I had planned this purely for reception speeches but they just might be a huge asset for civil wedding Jack, good idea!! I normally get the celebrant to position the reader just behind and in-between the couple so I can grab audio from the groom's lav mic...some do have a mic stand positioned way off to the side and if there is a handheld mic it's hard to mic the person doing the readings...a lectern would also give them somewhere to put their document too!!! Funny, my buddy Chip just emailed me and said the same thing as celebrants don't ever supply a "station" from where the readings are done. Your wife can be a very popular first in this field..in fact, I often see celebrants also having huge files to read the couples "how they met" story and struggle to hold it. A nice lectern with an ornamental front cloth would add a lot of value to her presentation!!!

Chris

Sometimes I wish I could glue the mic to a stand, I hate it when they start walking around makes it extremely hard to film luckily it's very seldom that they do but it happens even with two cameramen it sucks, these days if they decide to start pacing I simply go wide and leave it like that.

Not once have I had an issue with my Zoom H4N connected to the soundboard. My goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible and showing up with a podium certainly goes against that! I'm in NYC and I think I've seen toasts given from a podium or lectern once. This stand wouldn't fly in my market.

Looks great Chris, great idea. I'm sure it will work well for you!

Not once have I had an issue with my Zoom H4N connected to the soundboard. My goal is to be as unobtrusive as possible and showing up with a podium certainly goes against that! I'm in NYC and I think I've seen toasts given from a podium or lectern once. This stand wouldn't fly in my market.

Chris, I'm with you. I wish they spoke from a podium here in the States. I had a wandering Best Man just last week.