Because we were having a doing-it-ourselves reception, there were a lot of items to borrow or rent. We could have gone to Allerdice Party and rented everything in one fell swoop, but we decided to try to do some deal-hunting first.
The Tent
Lorna, our hostess, had recommended Belmonte for a tent and tables. Mom called around a few places just to be sure, and found that they did have better prices on tents than Allerdice or Clifton Park Rental. We were very happy with their service, too.
Tables
We used tables from a mish-mash of places. Lorna had a few, we borrowed a few from church, and we rented the rest from Belmonte. We wanted to use mostly round tables, but did use a few rectangular ones. Our servers recommended that we push the rectangulars together in pairs to make squares. That worked well, especially for a few larger families. We figured that families that would otherwise fill or nearly fill an eight-person round might like to sit with other people for conversation during dinner.
Chairs
I loved the look of wooden chairs, and my grandmother's church had a whole bunch which they lent us entirely for free. Very kind people. Of course, someone had to deliver and retrieve them, and I think my Uncle Marshall was responsible for that . . . the only problem with borrowing stuff is that you're making extra work for people! We did have to rent about half of our chairs, and we just used plain white ones from Belmonte.
Linens
Lorna suggested that we buy yards and yards of cheap white fabric at Wal-mart and sew our own table cloths. She had a pattern and we (Mom) initially planned on taking this advice. We had seen a picture of an outdoor reception in a Martha Stewart wedding book from the library, and in it the tables were dressed with long white underskirts and square champagne cloths on top. This was our goal, but with many, many tables, it was going to be a lot of sewing! When our caterers suggested that we rent linens through them, we compared prices and found that it was definitely worth-while to rent! It was cheaper and saved a lot of time. The caterers proclaimed the white and champagne combination "normal" and had no problem simply adding to their weekly linen request from Morgan Linen. I don't know if Morgan had fancier fabrics to choose from like Allerdice did, but renting from an industrial linen company was definitely more economical than renting from a party company, and even more economical than making our own.
Dishes
Our original plan was to use high-quality disposable dishes, cups and flatware, but we thought we'd price china just to gather information. Our discovery was surprising; they were about equal in cost. My advice? Definitely compare prices, just to make sure! China would be classier and wouldn't blow away in the wind, and it seemed better than throwing all that plastic away. With this decision, however, came a hidden cost. Our servers decided to inflate their prices once they heard that they'd have to clear, rinse and stack plates instead of just throwing them away. Prepare for hidden costs! We rented china from Allerdice, and they offered to drop off and pick it up for an additional $40. My parents decided to save us the $40 and do it themselves, but looking back, it would have been very worth $40 for someone else to do all that grunt-work the day before and a few days after the wedding.
Other Stuff
We rented a "deluxe" porta potty from who knows where and borrowed pitchers, bread baskets and chafing dishes from church. It was a bit of extra work to load all that stuff up and bring it all back, but it was worth it . . . and I'm certainly thankful that people were so willing to lend us stuff!
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