Rent vs. Buy?

THAT, lovelies, is the question.

In my exhaustive search for the least expensive rental company, I found myself wanting to vomit (often) at the price of linen rentals.

Could someone please tell me why it’s okay to charge $20 per tablecloth? For plain white, no frills linens? RIDONKULOUS.  After toiling over spending over $400 on tablecloths alone I decided there had to be a better way.  So, I sat down with my fabulous aunts (love the shit out of them, seriously) and we brainstormed.

One option was to make our linens… ok, yes.  Cheaper, yep; but also a pain.  I’m not a fan of giving myself one more DIY project… I’m already  up to my gills in do-it-yourselfing.

Another option was to buy them.  Crazy, right? Actually, not so much.  After some creative Googling, we found this site.  Turns out, I can purchase my linens outright for $7-10 per piece (that’s a savings of 50% percent, folks).  So that’s what I’m doing.  I may also buy some fabric and tear it (so it has frayed edges) into runners for the rectangular tables we’ll have… love runners.  Love.  Love. Love.

Instead of paying close to $500 for linens, we’ll be paying about $195 — I’ll post the actual number once we buy them!

The great thing is that our venue provides 16 tables — so all we need to do is figure out what size linens we need, and secure the rentals so that we can order the linens.

Even better is the fact that after the wedding, we can have them cleaned and can sell or rent them on Craigslist.  Smart, right?

Lastly, a rule of thumb from my aunt – your tablecloths should hang over the lip of the table by at least twenty inches.  So keep that in mind if you choose to purchase vs. rent!

What are YOU doing for your linens?

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