Chair covers or rent chairs ?

I honestly think people couldn't care less about chairs and would never spend money for covers or better looking chairs.

I despise chair covers, but I would despise spending almost $1000 on chairs.

Seriously, don't worry about it. As log as people have a place to park their ass, they won't care.

I think my venue has chiavari chairs for $8 per, but chair covers for $3 each so depending your budget, covers aren't a bad option.

I had the same exact issue (my venue has banquet chairs with RED padding-- hideous), and with some help from the WW community we decided that it wasn't important enough to spend money on chairs or covers. We are just using them as-is and assuming people won't be judgmental about them.

LOL @gamecock!! My mother was asking me about chair covers and I was like "I don't need to pay for a piece of satin for peoples' asses!"

At my venue they have chairs, only about 80 of the nice wood ones though. They also have 80 plain white ones. I would PREFER to have them all the nice wood finish, but I'm not really going to pay for it when I do have perfectly good chairs available. I just don't care enough about it. We will just have mismatched chairs!

To answer your question, though, I would just get chair covers if you really don't like the chairs. It will be way less expensive than renting.

I see all the good points, but I think those chairs with or without covers would throw the look I'm going for off. Purple,Modern,Clean Then it might look even worse since I'm getting a white dance floor.

If you want a look, then do it. I guarantee you, as Gamecock said, people won't care. From what I've heard those chiavari chairs aren't very comfortable, anyway.

I wouldn't bother spending money on either. No one will care.

If it's absolutely something you can't deal with, I'd choose the chairs... chair covers look horrid to me.

I'm not gonnna lie...the fact that my venue provides gold chiavari chairs was a huge selling point for me. Bad chairs basically ruin any attempts at nice decor to me. What's the point in spending ANY money on nice decor if all people are going to see are ugly chairs that dominate an entire room? I know I'm not helping the case...and, everyone is right, no one is going to walk out of your reception because of ugly chairs, but they do make a difference.

Do you have a picture of the chairs that you don't like? Honestly, I think chair covers draw attention to chairs and they can easily overwhelm a space. Most of the time, chairs visually disappear, especially around a beautifully set reception table. I'm a very visually oriented person, and I look at everything at weddings. I could probably tell you what the centerpieces, BMs gowns, MOB gowns, and table linens looked like at the last five weddings I've attended -- but chairs? Honestly, I have no idea what they looked like.

Over $900 for chairs that no one will probably even notice? I'd save it and spend the money somewhere else.

I'm with KM ^

If you have the money do it. Our last venue didn't have ANY linens included and I was stressing out how to add it to our budget but our new venue includes all linens including overlays and runners and chair covers and sashes. My only opinion is if you get chair covers get the kind that are like spandex and not the ones that are a giant ball of linen.

We are doing simple brown with aluminum chairs. They are the best looking but are costing us .70 cent each to rent versus the gold chiavari chairs I really wanted that was going to cost us $8 per chair and I need about 200 chair for ceremony and reception. I did buy some color chair sashes to add to the decor a little. I agree chair are part of the decor but at $1600 for chairs it wasn't in my budget!

This is actually one of the few things I notice at weddings re: decor. If you decorate the rest of the room nicely and then have crappy looking chairs, it throws everything off. On the other hand if it cost nearly a grand to cover/change them, I probably wouldn't bother cause it seems like a complete waste of money.

Our venue includes chair covers for free, woot woot.

Chair covers are huge pains and look like chair condoms. I have heinously ugly chairs in my reception venue but your money is way better else where.

I hated my venue chairs, so I went with spandex chair covers for a cleaner look. They ended up costing $375 ($3/chair) and the company came and set them up and took them down after the wedding. I thought it was worth it.

If you have the extra money, do the covers. I think they just make the overall look nicer. Our venue has pretty decent chairs, but we are still doing covers. Our covers I think are $3.00 a chair. I looked online and pricing to buy them are similar, but then you have to deal with ironing, setting up and everything the rental place does all of that so I don't have to worry about a thing.

@Emmy: Chair condoms , HAHA

I'm liking the spandex chair covers , they look expensive and neat. Here is a photo of the chairs for those that asked.

I honestly cried after leaving our venue for the first time and told DH that I would NOT go with that venue unless we spent $500 renting new chairs (one of my few meltdown moments!). Needless to say he talked me down off the ledge and we went with the chairs that were free. They wound up looking much better than I expected once the room was all decorated.