Never Thought I’d Care About Ceremony Chairs

If you would have asked me at the beginning of our engagement if I cared about what chairs we used at our ceremony, I would have said absolutely, 100% not. And now suddenly, I do care. It’s crazy what a wedding can do to you.

I started by browsing all of the big name party rental places in Rochester, as well as some I had never even heard of. That list included Nolan’s Rental, McCarthy Tents & Events, Tailored Events, Spatola’s Party Rental, Hank Parker’s Party and Tent Rental, Party Time Rentals (omg my eyes are burning!), Flower City Party Rentals, County Wide Rentals, Totally Tent & Party Rental, and LT Rental Service.

I was looking for your typical white wooden folding chair, but I browsed other offerings in case anything else caught my eye. What surprised me was how few people had white wooden chairs – most only carried white and black “Samsonite” folding chairs (which is the complete antithesis of what I want).

Based on price and availability, I narrowed the list down to three options: Nolan’s Rental, LT Rental Service and Hank Parker’s Party and Tent Rental. The downside was that the websites of these three options weren’t super helpful – it either didn’t give a price, didn’t have a photo, or only had a really small, grainy photo.

So I set out yesterday to each of their three showrooms to get a look firsthand. I was able to rule LT Rentals out because, in addition to not having any hours on their website, I couldn’t FIND their showroom. There didn’t seem to be any signage at the address given on the website, nor did they answer their phone. So that was an easy cut.

Next, I went to Nolan’s Rental, where a very helpful sales woman showed me the chair options they had. I narrowed in on the white wooden chairs, snapped a few pictures and got a quote.

It might be a bit hard to tell, but the size of the chair was smaller than your average chair – it almost looked like a child’s seat. I took a seat, and although I “fit”, it wasn’t very comfortable and I didn’t think anyone even slightly larger in frame than myself would be comfortable. I wasn’t feeling super happy about the option, but it was AN option (and I didn’t like any of the other choices they had).

Last up, I went to Hank Parker’s to see what they might had. I knew in advance that their chairs were not wood, but instead a white resin. I didn’t know how I exactly felt about that, but again, that’s why I wanted to see the chairs in person.

When I walked in, they had two wooden chairs set up in the near middle of the room. I loved them immediately, even though they weren’t what I had come to look at.

These natural wooden chairs were brand new, and the sales guy didn’t even know the price on them quite yet. But he was able to call the owner and find out for me, which was very helpful.

The sales guy also took me back into the warehouse to show me their white resin chairs, so I could compare. The first one we came across was slightly damaged on the padding of the chair (it had been pulled out of the racks for repair), but you can still get the overall idea of the chair itself. Whereas before I had been “worried” about resin instead of wood, the chair looked beautiful.

You really couldn’t even tell that it wasn’t wood, unless you made a really concentrated effort to inspect it. The sales guy was able to show me a side by side comparison with one of their previous wooden versions, and the difference was night and day. The wooden ones were really beat up, and showed their age/use. The resin ones looked nearly brand new.

I got a quote for both the natural wooden chairs and the white resin, and came home to get Dave’s opinion. He agreed with me that the natural wooden chairs were beautiful. So I’ll put putting in our rental order first thing Monday morning!