Save money on your wedding: How to Fix Your Ugly Chairs without going over budget

What's the first thing you do when someone comes to your house? You offer them a seat, right? Unless your reception is gonna be a super-short cake and punch type deal (half hr max) you've got to have chairs. Nobody wants to stand around all night, and some people can't. When it comes down to it, it's better to have butt-ugly chairs than no chair at all.

One option is to cover those ugly chairs with some fabulous chair covers!

However, just like there are 500 kinds of butts, there are 500 kinds of chairs, and 500 kinds of chair covers. Do not book chair covers sight-unseen--you need to make sure they will fit the ugly chair in question, or else you will end up further uglifying the chair with an ill-fitting, wrinkled chair cover (or worse, the chair cover won't even fit over the chair!) Your banquet hall may have chair covers available for an extra fee, or may have an existing relationship with a rental company that can provide chair covers that will fit their awful chairs. But if that's no go, borrow an ugly chair for the day and find a party rental store with covers that fit. If they won't let you do that, you need to take exact measurements of the chair in question and try to find a place in town that has covers to fit.

If you aren't already getting party rentals for your shindig, a great place to find a party rental store local to you is Yelp.com.

One easy option is the bag-style chair cover (see picture). It fits over most any chair, even folding chairs. Eh, I'm not a fan, but clearly a lot of people like them. However, you do have to tie them on, which is harder than just slipping on a fitted cover.

How much is this all going to cost? If you're looking for a basic white polyester chair cover, expect to spend at least $2-3 / chair. If you want to bring a little color into the mix, colored chair covers are an option but can be expensive and difficult to find. Remember, it's a wedding: it's okay to use white. Another option is using a white chair cover, then tying a nice colored chair sash around the chair. You can either rent the chair sashes from the same company, or use strips of tulle or any fabric, but tying the sashes is going to add to your set-up time. How fast can you tie a perfect bow?

If you're not having any luck with rentals, you can buy chair covers online and have them shipped to you. You will need to get dead-accurate measurements of the chair. A reputable dealer will send you a sample first (which you may or may not have to pay for), so you don't end up paying for 300 chair covers that don't fit.

Whether you decide to rent or buy, don't forget that somebody has to put all these dang chair covers on. Your venue might do it, probably for an extra fee, but if that's a no go you need to allow time to get this done. When testing out the sample cover, make note of how much time it takes to get it on the chair so you can get an idea of how much time this is going to take up.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but a chair cover to cover an ugly chair can often cost more to rent or buy than just renting a nice chair that doesn't need to be covered. Make sure your banquet hall allows outside chairs and provides a space to put the unwanted chairs.

Almost every rental company in the country has white wood / white resin wedding chairs (see picture). These go with just about everything and rent for $2-5 depending on what part of the country you live in. And, no futzing around with bows, though you can add bows to them if you're the sort that likes futzing around with things..
If you're going for a more casual feel, you can rent nice white plastic folding chairs for $1-2 each.

You can get a UHaul and pick them up yourself, or get them delivered by the rental company. The white resin chairs in the picture stack 25 per 5' tall stack--definitely won't fit in your car! Don't expect your venue to set up somebody else's chairs, so you need to either pay the rental company to do it or make sure you have enough set-up time to do it yourself.

Another benefit? Unlike most venue chairs, they're foldable and stackable, so if your guests decide they need to expand the dance floor they're easy to move out of the way.

All of the above options are going to cost $300-400 easy (assuming a 100-person wedding). If you can't swing that, here are some more options:
* Rent chair covers for the head table only. It's not the perfect solution, but renting 10 chair covers makes a smaller dent in the budget than renting 200, and many of your important pictures will be of the head table.
* Roll with it: Are your chairs truly hideous, or do they just not match your wedding colors? If it's still early and you haven't paid for your table linens or bridesmaids dresses yet, why not change the color scheme to match the chairs?