Practical Wedding Place Settings on the CHEAP!

My focus of this post is to show the pros and cons of using certain types of plates for a place setting at a wedding and what I am personally choosing for my wedding.

My fiance and I decided early on to have an inviting, casual, outdoor wedding. Basically, my idea is to have "rustic elegance" as the theme but not have it so "frou-frou" that guests feel out of place. Most of the men at the wedding will be construction workers or farmers so the laid back atmosphere should go over well. The above image I found on Pinterest and I just love the moss/pine cone/bird decor with white plates! We are renting a massive tent for our big day and the reception will be held under it. I am hoping it will be sunny and 74 on our wedding day (hey, don't we all!?) so we can have an indoor/outdoor thing going on but October in Indiana can basically come with any weather condition you can imagine. Because of this, I did not want a caterer, guests, or any servers/attendants to be encumbered with dealing with china/glass dishware. My reasons for NOT going with china will be detailed below.

Now, all this would be different if we had wanted a sit down plated meal. If you opt to have a plated meal, generally a caterer will provide their own dishes and flatware and will deal with cleaning/storing them - some however offer this at an extra cost per person or per plate. When we looked into having a plated meal catered, it came out to about $25-$35 PER PERSON for the basic two entree/two side option. I am wanting to have this wedding as inexpensively as possible, so having a meal cost that much is out of the question. Instead, we are having a barbeque picnic style meal - which would better suit us anyway. The caterer we are going with does provide basic foam or paper plates. While this would be just fine if we were having a Super Bowl party or general get-together with friends, I feel that this sort of table setting would be too casual for a wedding.

This got me thinking of plate options. I knew right away I did not want paper plates. Despite the fact that you can get both round and square paper plates at Party City in any color you desire, I feel that most basic paper plates just scream birthday party and not wedding. Furthermore, when you are at a buffet piling on delicious eats the last thing you want to happen is for your plate to "sag" or bend. The inexpensive plates you get at the party store tend to be very thin and flimsy which leads to double or triple layering to make them sturdy enough. Not only is this wasteful, but impractical since the plates will be thrown away anyway. So, instead of each guest throwing away maybe 2 plates each, they are throwing away 6. Doesn't make much sense right? The "premium" plates pictured above I found being sold through an Ebay seller in "Embossed Citrus Green". While I LOVED these, they are $0.99 EACH when you add in shipping. Again, I do not want to spend $200+ on plates to be thrown away. PLUS, I would have to also buy dessert plates on top of the entree plates.

The next option is plastic. Again, like paper plates, with plastic you can run into the same problems with sagging and bending. Some of the cheapest plastic plates will also crack in the centers easily under the weight of food. Another problem with plastic plates is that they can get really hot if there is hot food on them - even more so than with paper. I remember being at a party last summer and I almost flipped a plate with baked beans on it because the plastic plate got so stinkin' hot in the center. Again, this will lead to people doubling or tripling the layers of plates creating unneeded waste. The plates pictured above I thought were SO cool - not really fitting with our theme - but SO cool nonetheless. They too were being sold by an Ebay seller and they are called "Luncheon Wedding Plastic Plates". I had a sticker shock moment however when I added in shipping, they were $1.60 EACH. The silvery lace on the outer edge commands a premium and they are beautiful - but really, if you are going to spend $1.60 on ONE plate, you might as well get china.

When I went to GFS with my mother and we were pricing out their plastic plates, I found their prices were comparable with online prices. They had "basic" clear plastic plates with a scalloped edge for $11.49 for a pack of 18. They were "OK" but with tax they would be about $0.65 each. The matching cake dishes were $5.99 a pack for 18 or about $0.35 each. I was pretty happy with the price being at about $1 per guest for dinner and dessert plates combined. But...well...the plates were boring, basic, and just not cute. They did not look elegant, or special, or interesting. And again, I was worried that they would be too thin and would need to be doubled and that would eat into costs unnecessarily. I was about to give up at GFS until I found THIS:

GFS sells these awesome packs of plates by Mozaik. The plates inside are quite sturdy plastic. They are white with a silver metallic edge, and you cannot tell they are not real china! At GFS, they have this 40 piece set for $9.99. It is a full service for 8 WITH "stainless steel look" utensils. There are 8 entree plates, 8 dessert plates, and 8 each of plastic knives, spoons, and forks. That comes out to about $1.28 with tax per guest. You can find these exact same plates online with a gold edge too, but they did not sell the gold version at GFS. Considering there are utensils with this makes it a great deal. BUT - I just knew I could get a better deal if I looked.

And I DID find a better deal on the EXACT same plates! I had a hunch that the Dollar Store might carry these...Some of the local Dollar Stores DO carry the entree plates - 4 for $1. They also sell the small dessert plates - 6 for $1 and they sell small packs of the stainless-look silverware. I priced it out compared to the boxed set at GFS and found that by buying the plates and utensils separate, it is about $3 cheaper for a 8 person place setting. The only issue with this is that often times, once discount stores like a Dollar Store or Deals run out of an item, they might not ever get more in. This month I am planning to visit all the local "dollar" type stores to see if I can score enough plates for everyone and get it out of the way.

One of the main reasons I wanted to go with these particular plates is because I really do not want people to throw them away per-se - but I want them to be thrown into a plastic bag where they can be dealt with later.

Allow me to explain. 

Initially, I had this grand idea that I would use mismatched vintage china plates for the wedding meal. I found this picture above on WeddingBee and it is pretty representative of my own vintage plate collection. This style of place setting is very on trend for rustic weddings and it would have gone with my theme perfectly. My every day plates are made of mismatched floral bone china that I have picked up over the years from yard sales and flea markets, so I had planned on just going on buying trips and picking up more plates here and there. But then I got to thinking...as a vintage dealer for 13 years I know the problems you can run into with vintage dishes. Here are a few problems you can encounter with using vintage plates:

Fragility:  

Vintage plates often have hairline cracks and crazing due to age. While this can be very appealing as a display on a wall or in a hutch, if you use them for food you have to be very careful what kind and how much food you put on them. Very hot foods can cause hairline cracks and fissures to open up and a plate can literally break in half as it sits on a table with hot food. If you have a weighty pile of food it can also cause a sudden break right down the center of the plate. If you have foods with sauces or drawn butter, it can leak through these cracks as well and dirty your table cloths and mats. Vintage plates are also often made of English bone china or Japanese porcelain and the second they "tap" another plate or glass they will chip.

Practicality:  

If you have 150+ entree plates and 150+ dessert plates, someone will have to be in charge of taking them into the kitchen and washing them. Unless you have a wonderful family member or friend willing to stand in the kitchen for 2 hours washing dishes, this will likely be more of a pain for YOU as a bride than what it is worth. Vintage plates make this even more difficult to address. Vintage plates cannot be put into the dishwasher. The high temperatures of modern washers will cause plates to bust and chip during a cycle even if they are not touching each other. You also cannot stack heaps of vintage dishes together and carry them together for the same reason. So, you will have attendants making many runs from your tables to a washing area where dishes will pile up until they can be washed and properly stored. I would imagine this would cause breakage of probably three-fourths to half of the plates in all honesty.

Storage:  

What are you going to do at the end of the night with 300+ plates? No, even more importantly, where are you going to store these before the big day? Since vintage plates are so fragile they really need to be wrapped separately and stored in something like a big plastic tub with a lid. As you would be making endless trips to Goodwill and flea markets collecting your dishes, you would need to make sure they were being stored so they would not get broken in the meantime.When I was looking for Ball jars for drinking I did find that some vendors in the south rent out vintage plates.

The Verdict:  

Because of all these reasons, I decided that the white plastic plates with silver rim would work best for me and my guests. I am also thinking that just in case they may not be sturdy enough that I might see if a simple plastic changer would help dress up the table. My plan is for people to "discard" the plates into bins outside where they can be bagged up and tied off after the meal to avoid smells or bugs. I will have no problem washing them myself the following day and either reselling them or renting them out. As a bride on a tight budget, I am going to maximize the re-usability of everything I buy for my wedding to recoup some of the expenses after the big day.