After years of drooling over beautiful Bell Tentery, we are finally poised on the cusp of actually paying out hard cash for something. I say 'we' but actually I've been alone in my drooling (and got rather soggy) because DH is of stern temperament and has no time for creative visualisation re. tents or, indeed, drooling.
We've just had a mutual and booked tickets to a weekend folk festival that entails 4 nights of camping, and given how much our holiday cottage cost to rent, I think we might have to have more camping and less renting over the next few summers. We have a 3 yo DS and a 4 mo DS (by the time the festival rolls around he will definitely be crawling) and need somewhere nice and roomy (can clear decks back, ie. bedding, if needed, to provide playroom space). I don't go a ton on tents that have permanent 'bedroom' pods, and in fact I just prefer the open-planness of bell tents and similar.
We were planning to borrow a family tent from a friend, but the first friend is using hers on august bank holiday, and the second doesn't have one any more. I did have a very very kind offer from a MNer to lend her own tent (she lives close to the festival) but we've now decided we'd like our own, so now my issue is to convince DH that we need a lovely canvas number, not something all billowy and lime-green. 
We also need something that goes up in a flash, because with a 3yo and a baby we don't really want to be fannying about for 45 minutes while they scream in the car/vanish over the horizon/strangle on stray buy ropes.
I am very much biased towards bell tents because of the significant amount of time I've already invested in browsing bell tenty websites (particularly belltent co) and I'm afraid I'm already leaping ahead and visualising cheap cotton rugs, homemade bunting, wooden boxes for tables bunting extraneous ambient lighting, and other such wankery. (NOT nekkid flames though. I may be twee but I'm not mad.) It's probably not too late to head me off at the pass though, and I could be convinced of an alternative route to camping nirvana.
We've looked at 2nd hand 'family' nylon monstrosities tents on ebay and DH has grudgingly agreed that we could spend between £200-300. I suspect this could be stretched to £400, and therefore we could afford a new bell tent but probably not the Touareg (unless DH falls in lurve). (And that's before buying mattresses etc. Ooh dear.)
Could canvas-tent people try to convince DH of reasons why we should get one? He is nervous about issues such as waterproofness, leaking groundsheets if not all-in-one, mould, ease of erection fnur fnur (I WISH he would stop calling them Bell End tents too) (and sniggering), speed of erection and packability. (How large does a 4 or 5 m bell tent run to when you pack it back into the car? We have a Mazda 6 which has a TARDIS boot but would like to take some clothes too.)
If canvas-refuseniks want to offer some counter arguments, I suppose that would be ok too.