What you actually have to rent for an event on this coast — which, at several of the best venues, is a good deal more than tables and chairs.
Planning guides: Venues · Planners · Photographers · Rentals · Florists · Bar service
The thing people underestimate
Some of the finest places to get married here have no kitchen at all. A campground on a headland. A meadow. A ranch where the nearest three-phase power is a quarter-mile away. Those venues are worth every bit of their reputation, and they’re also a delivery problem.
If your venue has no kitchen, the kitchen arrives on a truck. So does the refrigeration, the lighting over the prep area, the power to run it, the hand-wash station, and the bins. None of that appears in the photographs, all of it appears in the budget, and it’s routinely discovered late.
The list nobody hands you
- Tables and chairs — obvious, and usually the only line people budget for.
- Linens, glassware, china, flatware. Count on more glasses per guest than feels sensible; they get put down and abandoned.
- A tent — on this coast this is weather insurance, not decoration. It can be beautiful in August and horizontal in September.
- Catering tent or prep cover, separate from the guest tent. Rain onto an open prep table stops service.
- Refrigeration. The single most-forgotten item at kitchen-less venues, and the one that turns a menu into a shorter menu.
- Generator and distribution. Ask your caterer what they need in amps — they’ll have the number ready.
- Task lighting for the working area. Guests get fairy lights; the kitchen needs to see.
- Hand-wash station and graywater disposal. Often a health requirement, always a practical one.
- Bathrooms, at any outdoor venue without plumbing for your headcount.
- Bins and waste removal. Somebody has to take it away, and at a three-day buyout that’s a real volume.
Ask your caterer for their equipment list before you book rentals, not after. We’ll tell you exactly what we need, and the overlap with what you were about to order is usually large. Ordering twice is the expensive mistake here.
Rental companies serving this coast
People we know, working this coast.
The Rental Place — Fort Bragg · fortbraggrentall.com
The main local outfit, and the one most coast events use. Tents in thirty-odd sizes, plus tables, chairs, china, flatware, glassware, linens and lighting. Being on the coast rather than trucking from Santa Rosa matters more than people expect when something’s missing at four o’clock.
Generations Vintage Rentals — Fort Bragg · generationsvintagerentals.com
Vintage and specialty pieces, also local.
Bathrooms. Unromantic, and completely non-negotiable at any outdoor venue without plumbing. There are trailer companies that serve this coast — ask your venue who they’ve had before, because they’ll know who actually turns up.
Not just weddings
Rentals get associated with weddings, but the awkward jobs on this coast are the other ones: a retreat for eighteen in a house with seating for eight, a family reunion where nobody owns enough chairs, a long table under trees that has to arrive on a truck. If you’ve taken a property for the week, the rental order is usually the difference between eating together and eating in shifts.
What to ask a rental company before you book
When do you deliver, and when do you collect? Ask about the collection specifically — a Sunday pickup and a Monday pickup are different prices and different check-out times. Do you set up, or drop and go? Not the same service, and the gap between them is a lot of work. Can a truck reach the actual site? Half the good spots here are a hundred yards from the nearest road. What’s the wet-weather plan, and when’s the last day to add a tent? Every outdoor date on this coast needs a real answer, not a hopeful one.
And while you’re here
We’re Mendocino Chef — private dinners and small events from Point Arena to Ten Mile and inland through Anderson Valley. We cook small weddings and the dinners either side, retreats, rental-house dinners for people who’ve taken somewhere for the week, and the odd birthday that turns into something bigger. Two chefs, cooking it themselves, in your kitchen or the one that came with the house.
Which of these you need depends enormously on the venue. Our venue guides say plainly, for each place, whether there’s a kitchen — start there and the rental list writes itself.
Work this coast and not on here? Tell us — and if something needs updating, tell us that too.