To airbrush or not to airbrush ???

I shot a family bat mitzvah this past weekend....and have a question about cleaning/sweetening the scene...

To do it or not do it...and is it worth all the time it'll take to do another 8 or so...does the unedited scene look more 'real'....and should it...????

I've looked at both too many times to see it freshly if you know what I mean...and I'm sure you do....
so...
Here's one version....to view on its own, free of comparisons..
In a day or so I'll post version two...below it to compare after this first look has had time to "rest"...
Thank you for looking...

okay.... you want to ask which is better but only show one... eeer... it doesn't need time to "rest." post them both at the same time.

Both pix now posted

hmm... i dunno if these pics are worth the time. by the way, you missed the legs of the speaker stand both in front of and behind the woman.

i'm sure the clients will appreciate it. But I don't know if I would bother with it. I think the white bag you cloned out already, the background people, DJ setup (?) and the exit signs are more distracting than the light and speaker setup.

Well here's a different perspective: They paid probably a good sum to have all that equipment brought in, so maybe they would like it to be in the photos. Plus anyone who was there knows that the equipment was there, so there's no real reason to pretend that it wasn't.

It is unfortunate that it was set up that way, so in the future you might want to scout how everything is set up and make changes in advance so that they can be photographed favorably. Everything is a learning experience, and this shall be too (especially when you find out if they want the equipment left in or not.)

Well, I was inclined to go with all the gear myself....if I were doing this locally, I would've brought a folding screen backdrop (this was in Boston, and I'm in FLA)
....and in this case, I should have asked the hotel if they had any kind of folding separating door...it would have made it a lot cleaner
...though a bit artificial, removed from the reality of the situation as suggested by Cat...all that gear is part of the scene (as is the DJ in the background), and removing it looks strange to my eye, which is why I posted it first and without the original....
...as biggs says, it's probably not worth the effort, as all eyes will likely be on the people looking at the cake anyway...

since you did it.. I would show the one without the av equipment.. but like others have mentioned.. I am not sure I would have shot it to start or kept it if I slipped up and wasted the electrons recording it..

Thinking again of how to deal with the "reality" of the scene, air brushing out the background might not be as good idea as darkening it altogether, the way it appeared to our eye rather than to the camera's sensor...sooooo.....

You missed a bunch of stuff, the exit sign is very distracting too. The noise is really bad, I'd say do noise reduction on the background, maybe blur.
The last one looks terrible, the halos are very obvious.

Thanks for your advice Emma...
I agree...I do think I over-did the dark background...how's this?