Rent or Buy Linens? Help!

I ended up buying burlap tablecloths for my wedding. Renting it was going to be expensive, so I researched places online to buy it at the most affordable price (tableclothsfactory.com). I was able to sell them (months later) and make back some money. If you think you'll have a good chance at re-selling linens (there are lots of bridal resale websites/Facebook groups), I'd suggest buying. Plus, maybe you'll end up wanting to keep some fancy lines to have at home Renting certain things can be so frustrating because you spend almost as much to rent and return than you to do buy and keep!

We are renting the linens for our guest tables but have elected to purchase the tablecloth for our head table because the size and style we wanted was not available from the rental company. The rental company has no problem with this, however, they will only set up the linens we get from them. Fortunately our venue will set-up our head table, but the set-up and tear down is something you may want to consider for both the linens and centerpieces. On a side note for re-selling your items, I had looked at buying used linens but when I saw everyone was selling them for the retail price I thought it was stupid, why buy used if you can buy new for the same price? If you do end up purchasing items with the intention or re-selling them after your wedding I would only plan on making half the money back (of course there is potential to make more)...or list them for what you paid and run the risk of never selling them. That's just my two cents, good luck with everything, I'm sure it will all come together!

I bought all of the stuff to make my centerpieces including flowers. Hoping to resell to the person that will set up my linen & tables. I did consider buying my linen from cvlinens.com & tableclothfactory.com. I ordered one set from a vendor on Ebay just to set up everything at home for a test run of how it would look.

For linens, there is much less stress, organization and work involved if you just rent everything...totally worth it in my opinion. Resale is a gamble really and may not be as easy as it seems...and I think the most you can possibly hope to make back is maybe half of what you paid, and I really think you'd be lucky to get even that.

In my area renting linens were more expensive then buying them so I purchased all of my mine from cvlinens.com and my experience was fantastic. I highly recommend that site!!

I just bought our linens the other day from ebay. It would have been $20 each for white satin to rent or $8 to buy. I do plan on reselling. Even if I only get a few dollars for each one, it's still much cheaper than renting for me.

Thanks so much for your input, everyone! This info is incredibly helpful. I think I'll do a combination of renting the guest table linens to avoid having to deal with pressing and cleaning them and buy the head table luxury linens from CVLinens.com as well as the satin napkins and trying to sell them for less than what I paid brand new since they will be used at that point and no one will want to pay full retail price for that.

Hopefully these tips will help other brides just like us.

Ok so here's my other conundrum. Our florist is also our day-of coordinator who will be setting up everything. Is it insulting/rude/whatever to buy silk flowers to decorate our wedding arbor instead of getting real flowers through her? We'll be getting real flowers for everything else, but they're so fragile and expensive for something like a wedding arbor. If I do buy silk flowers, is it completely insulting to have her set it up the day of the wedding when they're not real flowers?

I think you have a good idea with using silk for the arbor, I would just pitched the idea to your vendor! My florist was very understanding of our budget and in my experience with vendors this far they are very willing to work with you versus losing you as a customer. Using silk for the arbor will probably help them as well because it can be done earlier than the rest of the centerpieces!

Rent them. Seriously, you do not want to be dealing with them, and selling them will another headache.

And satin napkins? Ineffective. Rethink that.

As for your flower ordeal, make sure that your florist allows you to have silk flowers. A lot of the florists I checked out had a clause about no other flowers being present. Because your arbor/arch is a reflection of their work now. So just be sure to double check your contract before you invest in the silk flowers.

@Celia sounds like you and satin napkins had a bad run-in. I prefer them over polyester because the color and quality look better in my opinion and for the look I'm going for, but they're not for everyone. @Brittany great point, I'll check with the florist on that. Thanks!

I'm doing a little of both. My caterer includes linens for round tables. I am renting specialty linens from my DOC. I have a few long tables that I want white polyester linens for and it was much, much cheaper to buy than to rent from DOC. I'm not really interested in reselling them so I'm not worried about it. But to the rent them was double what I could buy them for. Research all options. Understand that if you buy all your linens they will need to pressed or steamed. You will also have to clean them afterwards.

@Allison - No problem. I hadn't even thought about that til the florist brought it up during a sit down consultation.

Check out Smartyhadaparty.com We bought everything off there without a problem. After seeing their prices, we couldn't justify the rental price.

I bought mine as it was cheaper to do so, but now I have a tub of linens just sitting around. I planned on selling them too, but have yet to bother trying to sell them. We washed them at a laundromat as there were a lot. The time spent, and money at the laundromat made it less of a better deal. Next time I would probably just rent

We are renting cause I could not imagine having to buy linens and reselling them haha. I dont have the patience.

I bought our table runners from linenstablecloth.com for less than a dollar. It was cheaper to buy than rent, but I probably won't try sell them.

I bought my round ones used on a local brides site for $4 each. I will be able to sell them for close to that. The people I bought them from already cleaned & steamed them. I will have to have a few rectangles ones & those will be rented from my doc. If she had had 120 in rounds then I would e rented those from her too.