How to *cheaply* decorate ugly plastic chairs!?

x_missymoo_x

Hi all,

For my DIY wedding next year we've booked a local village hall. Everything about it is fab... clean neutral walls, laminate floor, massive kitchen, plenty of space indoors and out. But, the chairs are horrid!! :eek:



They are the plastic stacking chairs that wouldn't go amiss in a school hall and are a rather fetching blue colour. Now this wouldn't be so bad, but my colour scheme is pink and orange... no place for blue and before anyone says it, I am NOT going to change my colour scheme around these god-awful chairs!

I've had a look at chair covers but they are quite pricey and can often look ill-fitting, especially on these bad boys. So... any ideas on how I can disguise and decorate these vulgar pieces of work in a cheap way? Even better, if anyone has any photos of transformed chairs that would be brill

trying_2_b_good

I know you can hire chairs in for about the same price as chair covers? Would there be any room in your budget for this? Other than that I'm out of ideas!

Minimoo24

i saw chair covers for these charis on ebay the other day! i dont know what they was uner but have a look! x

LEJC

The obvious thing to cover them with would be a coat or a scarf,a wrap or whatever else your guests chose to put over the back of them...

If you were wanting to make a feature of them then the colour isnt that bad and should blend in...you could think about attaching big bold gerbera to the back of them...if you are handy with a sewing machine then you could look at making seat pads in your colours that slot in so the seat doesnt feel quite so hard....and thus making them blend in a bit more with your colours

I think actually though once you have the tables laid nicely and your centre pieces in situ then the chairs will actually blend in and no one will notice them once they are sat on them

x_missymoo_x

I would possibly go for chair covers as a last resort, but ideally would prefer if I could do something with them! Thanks anyways

LEJC - great shout about the gerberas, I am actually planning on having those feature a lot in my scheme! Not sure about the sewing, been a while since I did any!

I was thinking of wrapping organza or ribbon around the backs to try and fit them in, but pink or orange may look over the top. Do you think it could fit well if i used a white / off-white ribbon on all the chairs? I am planning on having all the tablecloths white so the pink and orange will stand out. What do you think?

MrsDrink

Just a thought I'm hiring 20 white plastic garden chairs for £1.50 each (plus £10 delivery/collection) - okay so they aren't really great wooden cushioned chairs but being white I guess they are a bit more easy to tie into any colour scheme. I don't know if this is any cheaper than chair covers.

This is what I'm hoping to do with them:

I've got 20 burgundy gerberas (our colour scheme) and some wired ribbon - hoping they will tie easily enough!

MsShopper

You've probably seen these too, but I've come across white stretchy chair covers on eBay quite cheap as long as you can draft in some helpers to put them on and take them off again later - a £1 a chair or something like that, I think! Then you could tie some organza ribbon around each one in pink and/or orange to dress them up a bit more.

aarchk

I had horrible folding plastic chairs and hired stretchy covers. But they sent the wrong ones and I had to go out and hire banquet chairs at the last minute! They were hired from budget wedding decor and too their credit they did refund immediately, its just the royal wedding bank holiday meant they couldnt get the right ones to me in time. They are about the cheapest I think so maybe worth a look?

Because it was so last minute I was able to get the banqueting chairs quite cheaply so I only lost out by about £50. as they did not charge delivery or seat pad hire which generally pushes the cost up.

I think the chairs you have are a lot nicer and more comfortable than the ones I could have ended up with, they are a very neutral blue colour and I think will blend in and not be that noticeble but its up to you if you fancy getting covers for them.

twink22

how about buying some cheap material and just covering teh backs, not the whole chair

http://www.elizabethannedesigns.com/blog/2008/11/12/folding-chair-covers/

x_missymoo_x

Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions

I actually went to my venue yesterday to take photos and measure up to start planning decorations and the chairs weren't as bad as I last thought!! They are the same type as the top picture I posted, but they are much darker and more like a faded black. I do still want to decorate them, but don't think I will need to be as drastic as I first thought!!

Twink, I like the second picture you posted of the white organza and red flower, however I would prefer it to be tied in a bow around the chair rather than over the top.

Going with an idea I had earlier, I reckon I could just buy a couple of rolls of off-white organza, cut into sections, wrap around the chair back and tie in a bow (watched a tutorial on Youtube and it actually looks quite simple!). I'm guessing it should take no more than 1.5m sections for each chair.

Having a quick look on eBay there are 25m rolls of organza for around £6/7, so a using a bit of estimate maths I should be able to decorate 100 chairs for less than £50 - so even if I went for the cheapest chair cover options at £1 (I've not actually seen any prices like this around my area!) I'll still be better off by half. And even better, my grandad works at a florist so can get hold of wholesale stuff from their warehouse so I may even be able to do it even cheaper as it is a common floristy item and they may even do larger rolls. I shall try and get hold of a small piece to try one at the venue to see what it looks like before taking the plunge though!

Thanks for the help everyone!! :T

curlylou1986

Hi, we used large pull bows for our chairs, not sure if you can see in the pic -


i got them from here = http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Florist-Sundries-International/Pull-Bows-50mm-/_i.html?_fsub=1284692013&_sid=916209263&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322
i cant remember how much i paid but dont think the prices have changed, we had 60 bows in total and put one on each chair.
we couldnt afford to get chair covers, so this was cheap and didnt look bad. i was really worried about how they would look, but with the bows on and people sitting in them i didnt even notice the chairs!

hope can find something that suits !!