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With so many budget-friendly stores now offering dupes of stylish event items like crockery, cutlery and linen, many couples are choosing to buy the items they need for their wedding rather than hiring. But is this the best idea? 

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Overall when it comes to buying vs hiring, an argument can be made that it’s more budget-friendly to buy direct from a big-box department store. But it’s important to think about the logistics as well. Ask yourself, are they better quality? Who will transport them to the venue? Who will you need to pay to set them up on the day? Who will you need to pay to have them cleaned at the end of the event? Who will be collecting them and returning them back to you? When you hire your items you don’t have to worry about any of that. It takes away any hidden costs and means you’re not spending extra time on tedious tasks.  

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Another consideration when buying is storing or selling the items after your wedding. How long will that take? Will you be able to sell everything in one hit?  

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Let’s look at an example – linen. For the most part, the quality will not be better if you buy it. Hired linen is generally the best of the best. Its texture is beautiful, its length is expertly measured to fit event tables, and the added lux it adds to a room is priceless. Cheap store-bought linen is shiny in all the wrong ways, most often see through and requires more cloth and work to achieve coverage. Selling used linen is normally difficult, especially if your guests enjoyed themselves a bit too much and you have stains on any of the pieces. Unfortunately, this means your items will likely end up in landfill.  

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Cheap décor is another great example that many stores offer for bargain prices. It can be found in droves on places like Facebook Marketplace and the quality is hard to discern to the untrained eye. But in this case trust me, if you’ve ever had to clean out wax of over hundred glass vessels, you may think twice about buying over hiring.  

The newest trend to hit the bargain stores are lawn games and I speak from the experience of running my own hire business, some of the smaller games are great but the larger ones don’t compare to the quality of our hires. They don’t compare in size, quality, or durability. Plus, store-bought won’t set themselves up or pack themselves away.  

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When you hire your money isn’t going to a big corporation whose focus is on pumping out as many low budget items as possible regardless of its impact. Your money is going to a small Australian run business, and most likely a local to your community.  

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One final thought I want to share with you is while you may not think your purchase of one hundred plus plates, cutlery sets, and glassware is a big deal, in reality it adds to greater impacts of consumerism. All those items that you can’t on-sell go to landfill. All that packaging they came in will most likely go to waste. All the places they are manufactured in may not promote healthy workplaces and have fair pay standards. There is often a reason these dupes are so budget friendly.  

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When you hire, you join the hundreds of weddings choosing to lessen their impact by placing their trust in the experts. All that we ask is that you think not just about the costs, but also the impact your purchase will have in the long run.