Your Guide to Wedding Reception Rentals
There is a well-defined art form to curating a tabletop setting for a New England wedding reception. Carefully selected linens are layered with stacks of dinnerware, flanked by flatware, surrounded by an assortment of glittering, stemmed glassware. All of these items serve as functional pieces that enhance the gathering of your dining experience while lending themselves to the elevated design of your thoughtfully planned reception. Through the details below, we're delving into everything you need to know to gain a clear understanding of tabletop wedding event rentals.
What are Tabletop Wedding Rentals?
True to their name, tabletop wedding rentals are the items needed to customize and style each of the guest place settings at your wedding reception. Couples who plan a fully immersive wedding day experience for them and their guests view style, including place settings, as a way to construct an environment, giving their wedding day feeling through a hight touchpoint atmosphere. Every table tells a story, bringing together those you cherish for one of the most memorable dining experiences of a lifetime.
Tabletop Wedding Rentals offered by Gooseberry Tabletop for Couples Planning a wedding in ME, NH, VT, MA, and RI.
Our curated wedding tablewares focuses on modern refinement, through vintage, heirloom quality pieces, through the following items.
Do We Need Charger Plates?
This question that comes up so often about tabletop wedding rentals. Stylistically, charger plates work to set the tone of your place settings. But charger plates also include a few different functional purposes throughout the dinner service of your wedding. You can find more details on charger plates, including selection, sizing, available materials, and function, through this blog post which details the purpose of a charger as part of your wedding dinner service.
Do We Need Wedding Rentals?
Every couple's needs are different when it comes to wedding rentals. Many of the couples we work with plan tented weddings in New England. Tented weddings are exceptional events because they allow you to create your own environmental storytelling through the creation of a space that is highly curated. Tented wedding experiences occur through grand scene-setting rentals such as a sailcloth tent, dance floor, tables and chairs; right down to the tabletop items needed to create a place setting for each of your guests.
The number and types of rentals you will require for your wedding will depend largely on your venue. If you are planning a tented celebration, then yes, wedding rentals will allow you to build out your environment.
However, if you are planning a wedding at an indoor venue, it may be possible that some or all of these items are included in your venue contract. Some indoor wedding venues include a range of amenities such as tables and chairs. Meanwhile other venues are considered a ‘blank slate,’ allowing you the flexibility to create your own immersive environment through the rental of items that best suit your vision, creating a space similar to a tented wedding reception.
How Much Do Wedding Rentals Cost?
Truthfully, the answer is, it all depends. Wedding reception rentals can vary greatly in cost across a number of companies. The total cost of your wedding reception rentals will also be determined by your specific needs.
For example, do you require full place settings for 150 guests that include charger plates, dinner plates, salad plates, bread & butter plates, flatware, and stemware? Or are you searching for charger and dinner plates only? Your wedding may have a more intimate-sized guest list which requires a full dinner service, or it may be that you are currently searching for the perfect vintage style coupe glasses.
Gooseberry Tabletop wedding rentals can be priced out per collection, but many of our couples prefer to take an à la carte approach. This allows them to construct a rental package that suits their specific needs, selecting the items needed to style the service at their wedding.
Securing a Quote
After going over the finer details with your wedding planner (number of pieces needed, overall style), the best way to determine the total cost of your tabletop wedding reception rentals is to obtain a quote. After browsing through our rentals, you can reach out to us here for a personalized quote. This will give you a better idea of overall cost as it pertains to your specific needs.
If you plan on reaching out to another rental company, it’ll be important to ask them when your quote expires. Wedding vendors typically allow a specific amount of time between inquiry, quoting and booking, before ‘closing the loop’ on communication. This gives you the flexibility of selecting who to work with based on your needs, while allowing vendors to either work with you for your wedding or move on to another couple who may have inquired about the same wedding date.
Who Manages Wedding Rentals?
The answer to this is, it really depends. Let’s start with your venue. What’s included as part of the amenities tied to your venue contract? New England wedding venues cover a wide range of needs. If you plan on hosting a tented wedding on a farm, or by the idyllic shorelines of New England, then you’ll need to work with your wedding planner to source the items needed for creating your reception from the ground up.
On the other hand, your venue may offer some or even all of the items required for your reception. But it’s possible that the items do not enhance the vision, design, and style that you’ve put together for your wedding. In which case, you would still need to work with your planner to source the necessary wedding rentals.
If you are simply adding on a speciality item to your wedding, such as antique teacups, alongside the items offered in-house by the venue, then the rental of these items would also be managed closely through your knowledgeable wedding planner or coordinator.
Lastly, it is possible that your venue provides you with all of your required rental items, and you find that you don’t have any further needs outside of their in-house inventory. In this case, you would work closely with your venue's in-house planner or coordinator to manage your rentals. The venue's on-site staff will best be able to assist with setup, clean up, and breakdown of the items, the details of which will be outlined in your venue contract.
Obtaining Your Tabletop Wedding Reception Rentals - Delivery, Pickup, and Working with Your Planner
Whether you are planning a tented reception, or find that your venues in house items fall short in design, our high-quality heirloom-style tabletop rentals are best for couples planning a wedding throughout New England, including Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, MA, and RI.
We offer our couples delivery service throughout New England. However, this is typically done on a case-by-case basis and will largely depend upon the logistics involved with accessing your wedding venue.
If you’d like to check if we have experience delivering tabletop wedding rentals to your booked wedding venue in New England, you can find a complete list of the venues Gooseberry Tabletop has worked at through this link. If you find that your venue is not listed, you can reach out to us here to provide specifics on your venue and inquire about delivery of your preferred items.
When Delivery Occurs
Your tabletop items will arrive the day before or the morning of your event. Your estimated delivery will depend upon your venue contract and the timeline they use to permit access to your contracted wedding vendors for setup.
Weekend Weddings
Many of the couples we work with in New England plan weekend weddings, with several events stretched out over the course of three days. This includes their welcome or rehearsal dinner, the day of their wedding, and their farewell brunch. If you are renting items for each of these events, they will arrive together and be stored at your venue for ease of access and setup by your planning and design team.
What Happens After Drop-Off?
Once your tabletop items have been dropped off at your venue, it will be up to your planning and design team to style each of your settings. Our drop-off services occur through a hand-off process, allowing the creative vision of your wedding day to be left in the hands of your trusted design team.
Pickup
All of your tabletop wedding rentals will be picked up from your venue the day after your event(s). Pickup servies which will be scheduled in advance.
Communication of Your Rentals
Our approach at Gooseberry Tabletop is to collaborate closely with your planner. This includes key details included in your wedding rentals contract, information on delivery, inventory confirmation, and pickup. This process provides you with the design-forward tableware pieces needed for your wedding through a stress-free experience.
We Don’t Have a Wedding Planner - What Should We Do?
Weddings are a series of carefully planned (and timed) events occurring over the entire course of a day, or for some couples, a weekend. They involve a constant stream of communication between each wedding vendor to keep things moving along seamlessly while ensuring the couple getting married, along with their guests, are fully present and enjoying an unforgettable, memory-making event.
Can you plan a wedding without the help and support of a knowledgeable wedding planner? It’s possible. But the outcome, along with the ability to relax and enjoy your day, will not be the same.
If you do not plan on investing in a full services wedding planner, it is still possible to work with a coordinator who can oversee the details and logistics of your storied event. Wedding coordinators can often step in for the 30-day timeframe before your wedding, and manage the logistics and operations on the day of your wedding. This process can be helpful to couples whose needs are more in line with an intimate wedding day experience, a non-tented wedding, or weddings with few rental needs.
Our Venue Has an in-House Planner
Venue planners are a great resource for keeping things organized and structured at the venue level. However, it’s important to remember that venue planners work on behalf of the venue. Your overall vision is best trusted in the hands of a New England wedding planner who works directly with and for you. Thus allowing you peace of mind over the timeline and logistics of your wedding day.
How Do We Select a Tabletop Wedding Rental Company?
There are a number of tabletop wedding rental companies throughout New England, and each one offers its own unique service and selection of rentals to outfit your wedding. Cost aside, the right tabletop wedding rental company will be able to provide you with the total number of pieces needed to fit the overall vision and noteworthy design of your wedding.
Your selected rental company should be able to communicate openly with you and your planner, while accommodating your needs through an uncomplicated process directly centered on your design-forward wedding.
If you’ve reached out to a tabletop wedding rental company and have found that communication is difficult or putting together your packages seems to be confusing or arduous, we would urge you to continue your search until you find someone who is better able to meet your needs.
Tabletop Wedding Reception Rentals for ME, NH, VT, MA, and RI.
Located in NH, Gooseberry Tabletop wedding reception rentals are best suited for couples who desire a New England wedding with an atmospheric presence, shaped by elegant tableware rentals. Whether you are planning a tented wedding by the sea, or you desire the addition of enhancements to your wedding venue package, we work directly with you and your wedding planner through a highly personalized experience that allows you to source the items best suited to your taste. You can browse through more of our selections at this link or you can contact us here to answer any of your questions.
