If you peer over the couples twirling on dance floor here, past the swing band and the stage lights, and through the smoke machine’s haze – you can dimly see something that many ballrooms don’t run to.

Even ballrooms as grand as this.

Yes, that’s the high altar at Wellington’s Anglican Cathedral – which, last Friday evening, was transformed into the venue for Fiat Lux, the cathedral’s first-ever black-tie fund-raising spring ball.

The cathedral’s young adults, led by Megan Nelson, organised the ball to raise money for two schools that are about transformations of another kind.

They are a special school run by the Wellington City Mission for kids who haven’t been able to succeed in mainstream schools – and the Good Shepherd Secondary School in Kagera, in Tanzania. Most Tanzanian kids don't ever get a shot at a secondary education, and the Good Shepherd Secondary School is doing something about that.

Megan and her friends pulled out all the stops to make Fiat Lux a success.

Sam Manzanza, from West Africa, was in the foyer greeting ballgoers with his African drumming, while the cathedral’s organ scholar, 19-year-old Thomas Gaynor, played the first waltz on the cathedral organ. The 18-piece Liberty Swing Band played a number of brackets, while Michael Fulcher, the Cathedral’s Director of Music, played jazz piano during the band breaks.

But how do you begin to make a cathedral nave feel like a ballroom?

And how do you decorate a venue that big?

No problems for Megan and her friends there, either.

Because they hired a lighting company to paint the space with light.

Metro Productions wheeled in a rig with mirror balls suspended on a gantry high above the dance floor, and throughout the evening the nave was washed with changing patterns and colours, while floor lights splashed the columns with warm colour.

About 200 people came to the ball, which has raised about $5000 for the two schools.

Cinderella had to dash from her ball to beat her midnight curfew. No such curfew was in place for Fiat Lux – but by 1pm Saturday, the chairs were back in the nave, the lighting rigs had gone, and Friday night’s ballroom had been changed back into Wellington's Anglican Cathedral of St Paul.

Will there be more cathedral balls? Well, there have been plenty of calls for an encore, and now that the blueprint exists, Megan says she’d love to be involved in setting up another.

But she had to scale back her varsity studies to cope with the demands of setting up this ball – and she thinks she'll finish her studies before tackling the next one.

Photos courtesy of Jay Berryman.