Since we were inviting 130 or so people to the wedding, we collected enough dishes for roughly that many folks. That meant 130 dinner plates, 200 or so small plates for dessert and appetizers (we figured not everyone would take their own plate), 130 dinner forks, dessert forks, and knives, some spoons for sugar & coffee stirring, 100 or so coffee cups, and around 250 glasses for water and wine. Crazy!
Collecting the Dishes
First, while we originally wanted just china, after realizing the limitations of that, we expanded our search to dishes that primarily included white, brown, green, and yellow in their patterns. We wanted things that looked vintage, so we mostly avoided things that looked like they'd been created in the last few years.
Second, we rarely bought something that cost more than it would have cost to rent that dish. So that generally meant buying things on sale. Luckily our local thrift stores have frequent sales and color tag 50% of sales daily, so we were able to do this without too much problem. If you are just doing this for aesthetic reasons, you could probably pick up your dishes much faster than if you are also doing it to help your budget. We did sell most of our dishes after the wedding so we made up some of the money that way as well.
Third, we tried to get some of the dishes on Freecycle (for free). That meant driving around town picking things up. Again, if you aren't concerned about cost, you could eliminate this and save time.
Before the wedding, we had to wash all of the dishes. This took two full days. At home, we soaked all of the dishes in big tubs on our lawn. Neighbors thought we were insane hosing off dishes on our lawn, but we found that the sooner we got the price tag stickers off the dishes, the easier it was and our kitchen was too small to unload that many dishes.
Of course you can't really get dishes clean on the lawn, so after a quick rinse and removing the sticker, we would box them up. We drove all the boxes up to my parent's house (where the wedding was held) and a few weeks before the wedding we spent almost a full day running them all through their dish washer before separating them into boxes for each table. You can see pictures of the boxes piled high on the post I wrote about it.
One of the challenges of using mismatched dishes is how to actually use them at the wedding. While I've seen people use one pattern at each table, we decided to mix it up more than that. But we found that it looked not as good (to us) to use both china and stoneware on one table. So we stuck with mismatched china on certain tables and mismatched stoneware on others.
I actually handpicked the specific dishes for each table based on who would be sitting there. Again, crazy.
One of the hardest parts of doing your own dishes is that you actually have to do your own dishes after the wedding. We could have hired someone to do it, but we decided to take matters into our own hands. So on Sunday, after most people had left, we spent the afternoon rinsing off all the dishes, throwing out the broken ones, and sorting them into piles (garage sale, keep, give to friends). Honestly, we didn't wash them that well. We basically rinsed in soapy water, hosed off (yup, the hose again), and dried them in the sun.
We actually use the dishes from our wedding as our house dishes now (and we have some of our favorites of the china saved for dinner parties). It's kind of a nice, daily reminder of the wedding.
And one final note...If we had to do it over we'd rent the silverware. There are 20 knives at every thrift store for every 1 fork. And thrift store silverware isn't cheap and is often kind of gross. Also, some thrift stores package the silverware so you are forced to buy a big bag of knives to get three or four forks. Annoying!
18 comments:
i love this! it looks great & what a fun, eco, diy way to go! we thrifted for our cupcake tier plates, but we mostly rented, with a mix of vintage...since we had a buffet, i didn't get to set the tables like you did--it looked so cute!
hooray!
thanks for posting this! i LOVE your wedding and the dishes were something i could totally do cos i love yard saling. not that i am anywhere close to a wedding : )
thank you for posting about this! we are spending the next year gathering silverware, actually. thankfully i have a friend of mine who made it her job to collect forks far before we ever made the decision to use our own silverware at our wedding...thank goodness for her!!
jenifriend
I've thought about doing this...such an amazing idea! I just might steal it...I love mismatched dishes.
Thank you! Really great to know
I love the eclectic-ness of this! Very original!
I love your napkins - how did you do those? did you make them? was that hard to do?
That is so cool and has such a homey feel. I can just about imagine the conversations as guests compared their different dinnerware.
i love the idea of providing your own tableware and not hiring help, but i have a few questions regarding how this all went:
how did the table bussing work after your guests used the dishes? were they collected by someone or did guests take them somewhere (where?) themselves? how was this expressed to them?
I'm so glad to here someone else has done this. We are currently in the midst of thrift store shopping for all our china. It's very rewarding (plus, I've found a couple great deals that have nothing to do with the wedding!!) Originally, we said we were going to donate or sell all the plates after the wedding but I'm actually getting somewhat attached to some of them so we'll have to keep a few!!
Can I ask a really random question . . . you had some fabric in the center of the tables . . .we are doing something similar . . . what are the dimentions on "table runners"? Thanks!!
Anon-I just added a note about how we dealt with clean-up. Hope that helps!
I'll do a post about our linens soon!
I really love the look of the thrifted dishes, and I think it would look awesome at the old house where I'm getting married.
I really really appreciate all the tips! Thanks!
cute! it's nice to see how it turned out. we are doing this for our wedding in may. i already had my own collection of vintage dishes so it has not been too difficult to gather the rest.
I'm really enjoying reading your recap posts.
Would you write about your registry? We are setting up with Wishpot but I'm tentative. I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.
Just a note-- we looked into sourcing our own cutlery, etc. for our wedding in August and then discovered that certain things you can buy for super cheap at Ikea. You can get a 16-piece set of cutlery for less than $3.50...
Your table tops turned out beautifully! I was prepared to do this exact same thing but then we changed our wedding to a box lunch wedding instead. However, one week before the wedding I have now gathered all of the vintage napkins that I need for all of our guests.
I love love love the fabric that you used for your napkins, particularly the yellow gingham one.
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