5 Rental Must-Haves for a Luxury Chicago Wedding

Planning an upscale wedding in Chicago means balancing the city’s iconic architectural aesthetic with timeless, high-end romance. While venue selection, floral design, and lighting lay the groundwork, the magic of a luxurious reception is felt the moment your guests sit down at their tables. The textures of the linen, the weight of the flatware, and the clarity of the glassware.

To show you exactly how to achieve luxury look, we are taking a look inside a breathtaking real wedding at Sarabande Chicago. Styled to perfection with a romantic palette of sage greens, creamy whites, and soft blush pinks, this event perfectly illustrates how premium rentals can completely elevate an urban venue.

1. Ultra-Premium Pure Crystal Stemware

When it comes to a luxury tabletop, generic glassware simply won’t suffice. Premium stemware catches the candlelight, elongates your sightlines, and brings effortless elegance to the room.

For this Sarabande wedding, the tables were set using an exquisite lineup of Pure Crystal Stemware, including our Pure Crystal Water Goblets, White Wine Goblets, and Red Wine Goblets. The ultra-clean, angular silhouettes of the Pure collection create a flawless, modern profile that reflects the room’s warm glow.

2. Textured, Organic Charger Elements

To prevent a table setting from looking flat, luxury designers always use a charger or a distinctive base element to establish depth and texture beneath the plates.

Rather than a standard metallic charger plate, this design leaned into an organic, garden-inspired aesthetic by using woven green cord place mats. These intricate, textured mats frame each setting perfectly against the velvet table linens. They provide a contrast to the soft blush peonies and vibrant green hydrangeas, anchoring the entire place setting.

3. Minimalist, High-Gloss Dinnerware

Your dinnerware should serve as a canvas that allows the colors of your menu and your florals to take center stage.

The design team for this celebration selected our sleek White Linen Coupe Dinner Plates and Coupe Salad Plates. The coupe style offers a cleaner, more contemporary look that feels incredibly high-end, especially when topped with custom-illustrated floral menus and neatly folded napkins.

4. Contemporary, Heavyweight Stainless Flatware

Your silverware is the one element your guests will interact with continuously throughout the night. For a luxury wedding, choose flatware with clean lines and a brilliant, polished finish.

Our Modern Stainless Flatware collection was chosen to complement this look. The slender, elongated profiles of the handles lay gracefully alongside the plates, providing a polished counterweight to the rich textures of the woven place mats and lush floral runners.

5. Variable Candle Heights & Glass Hurricane Enclosures

No luxury wedding is complete without a sea of glowing candlelight, but the secret to an editorial-grade atmosphere lies in varying your heights and enclosing your flames in glass.

• The Vertical Height: Use slender, sage-green taper candles housed inside glass chimney tubes or clear cylinders to draw the eye upward and interact with hanging string lights.
• The Mid-Level Glow: Nest small glass votive cups and chunky pillar candles directly into the floral runners to illuminate the dinnerware.
• The Infinite Table Effect: When repeated down an expansive table layout, this mix of flickering glass cylinders softens the entire room and creates an intimate, unforgettable dining mood.

Explore the Tablescapes catalog or connect with our design experts today to begin curating your rental recipe!

Planning & Bridal Concierge: Samantha Li Bridal | Photography: Madeleine Beck | Venue: Sarabande Chicago | Floral Design: Flowerchild Floral Design | Catering: Txatxa Club | Hair Styling: Tamara Holden Hair | Makeup Artistry: Torie Conn MUA | Content Creation: The Carbon Edits | Tableware Rentals: Tablescapes Event Rentals featuring the White Linen Coupe Plates, Modern Stainless Flatware, and Pure Crystal Stemware | Luxury Linens: BBJ La Tavola | Stage Design: MM Event Planners | Wedding Dog Attendant: Wags of Love | DJ Entertainment: Sarabande Chicago | Live Saxophonist: Marital Sax | Stationery & Signage: Déjà Makes Wedding | Groom’s Custom Outfits: Wool & Linen | Bride’s Gowns: Honey Bridal &Carol Hannah | Featured Bride: May Zhu