What are some good cost effective options for table covers and plastic chairs?

See if amazon or some website of the sort has emerald green table cloths- if it’s a big enough size, it will drape to the floor and help hide what you don’t like about the tables. If not a website, there might be a rental place in your area that does this

Check facebook marketplace or some other sites where people are selling wedding kits -- stuff they used but now assemble with other items from their wedding. (It usually does not work well to resell such items individually.) To some degree, you could plan on reselling whatever you use for decorations.

I would rent the table cloths/linens. My rental company was about $8-10 per table cloth. When you add it all up it sounds like a lot but i think worth it. You won’t have to buy table clothes and have them sitting around forever. Plastic table clothes might fly up and not stay put. Rental means you can get any color or pattern you want! Good luck with whatever you decide!

I agree to check out rental places for linens. Buying them from Facebook market place or other retailers might be cheaper, but you'll also have to factor in the time it would take to iron all of those, transport them to the venue without wrinkling, set them up, take them down at the end of the night, etc. It's a lot less stress to rent linens and have someone from the rental company handle them. Rental companies usually have table cloths designed for specific table dimensions as well as chair covers, chair bows, or chair ties if you wanted to look into jazzing up the chairs. They'd also have the linens in matching colors so you wouldn't have to worry about the shade of the table cloths being off from anything you'd pick for the chairs. You could also check out Pinterest if you're interested in trying to DIY chair bows to tie around the chairs.

As far as color, white is typically the cheapest option, and since it's a neutral color it'll match with anything. If you want to use a color, I'd choose the most central color in your color scheme that isn't going to be used as much in your centerpieces (ex. if emerald green is heavily incorporated into the centerpieces, choose something in gold or your next most prominent color in your color scheme. If the centerpieces are primarily gold, choose emerald green for table cloths).

Rent linens from a local party rental company. Do not purchase unless you regularly host large parties of 50-100+ or will donate them to a local church or shelter. Purchasing and DIY almost never saves money due to the cost of time, labor and patience at minimum wage per hour.


Speaking from guest experience, please leave the chairs alone and don’t cover them. Have been a guest at way too many events where the hosts covered decent chairs which were so uncomfortable that guests removed the covers to be comfortable for the duration of dinner and chatting afterwards. As soon as your guests sit down, no one will care what they look like. The ones in the photo are not unsightly.