Disposable stuff isn’t high on my likes list. I’m the mom who put cloth diapers on her babies and cloth napkins on the supper table. So when it came time to plan for a certain reception, the dialogue went something like this:

Me: Disposable plates? I just don’t know.

Them: They look different these days. Really nice.

Me: Nice for disposable.

Them: Who notices what they’re eating on?

Me: Me.

Them: You can rent real ones.

Me: Renting costs almost as much as buying sometimes.

Them: What? You’re going to buy 200 of everything?

Me: What? You want to use plastic plates? Really?

This went on for a few weeks, me against everyone (including the caterer, who actually rolled her eyes when I mentioned I might want to use my own real stuff), until the one person with clout enough to turn the tide took my side — the bride.

“Of course I want to use china,” she announced one afternoon within hearing distance of the whole family, as if she’d never even thought of doing anything else. And suddenly it was no longer just me who wanted to use the real stuff, it was us. And the hunt was on.

It would end up being a months-long search that took us to backwoods flea markets, big city antique galleries and sketchy thrift stores. My husband even got in on the game, shooting me photo texts from his travels across the state.

Him: “How about these?” (photo of a stack of dessert plates in Yazoo City)

Me: “What’s it say on the back?”

Him: “Kenwood. Japan.”

Me: “Umm. That’s the good stuff. Offer them ____.”

Early on I had learned that bone china from Japan was usually upper end. I gleaned the information from a connoisseur at the largest vendor mall we visited, Marketplace Antiques, a 60,000-square foot picker’s heaven just south of Hattiesburg. The gentleman clued me in on a few other things as well, including the fact that I wasn’t the first wedding planner to shop his wares.

“What do you folks do with all this china when the weddings are over?” He asked, eyeing the stack in my cart.

“Sell it to your competitors,” I joked. He didn’t laugh.

Melissa Meredith of Mill Town Mall in Wesson told me china is making a comeback up north, if indeed it ever truly lost our affection. “I could sell a lot online, if it wasn’t so difficult to ship,” she explained while packing our set of Homer Laughlin dishes. She believes the growing demand indicates a consumer taste for goods with a nostalgic quality.

Maybe. Buyers are certainly much easier to explain than the sellers I ran into during our hunt. Eager to turn dusty boxes into cash, some sold me their family’s heirloom Lennox and Noritake like it was going out of style (and I guess they thought it was). My prize find, in fact, came from Brandon, where a seller apparently didn’t place much value on her grandmother’s set (from Japan, no less) with its delicate gold rims and what seem to be hand-painted florals. Exquisite.

Hauling such boxes to the car made me sentimental. I could just picture one of the plates being received as a wedding gift by a blushing bride many years ago. Who was I to have it now? And that’s when I started to realize what I was actually gathering — a collection of other brides’ wedding china.

And so, in the end, guests at Ole Towne last Saturday who braved the rain and a crowded sanctuary eventually found themselves eating on china with history — a history of love stories, Sunday lunches, Christmas dinners and whatever else the filigree and raised edges caused their imaginations to conjure up. I like to think plastic could not have accomplished that, especially now, as I have some 426 pieces of china to wash. And in a day when marriages can be as disposable as plates, having the real stuff, I hope, was a very precious thing.

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer who writes for The Daily Leader. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.