Decorating Your Table For A Dinner Party

Got a dinner party planned? On top of wowing your guests with flavors, a dinner party is also a chance to impress your guests visually by turning your home into a private themed restaurant for the night. Whether you want something fun or classy, here are some tips for decorating your event.

Decorating Your Table For A Dinner Party

Light some candles

Candles aren’t just for romance. They can create a sense of warmth that’s perfect for making people feel cozy and at ease in your home.

There are lots of ways to use candles creatively. You can buy Themed-shaped candles for themed events, as well as scented candles for adding interesting aromas.

If you’re planning a Chinese meal, you could consider hanging some Chinese lanterns around the room. For a Victorian meal, you could invest in some ornate candlesticks or traditional lanterns.

You should strategically place candles so that they’re not going to get in the way and potentially set fire to anything. This sets the mood for the dinner party.

Choose the right tablecloth

Unless you’ve got an easy-to-clean table surface, you’ll probably want to protect your table from stains with a cloth. There are lots of questions to ask yourself when buying a tablecloth.

What size tablecloth do I need? Should I choose a patterned tablecloth or keep it plain? This can all depend on the type of event.

For a formal event, you may want a bigger cloth with a longer drop. You may also want to stick with classic white to keep it sophisticated. For a casual dinner party, a more tight-fitting tablecloth with a smaller drop may be better suited.

These events are also better for experimenting with patterns and colors. Such patterns and colors could help to fit a theme such as a tartan tablecloth for a Scottish Burns Night banquet or a black tablecloth for a gothic Halloween meal.

Why not match up your tablecloth with some unique, yet beautiful, Spoonflower tea towels to add a little extra pizazz.

Spruce up with flowers

Flowers help to bring a cheery sense of energy to the table. Small displays around the table can make the biggest impact. Anything too large could stop diners from being able to see each other and could negatively affect the conversation.

Rather than using traditional vases, get creative by placing flowers in empty wine bottles and baskets and mason jars. Match flowers with another décor in the room, but try to make them a separate color from the tablecloth.

Get creative when serving wine

You can spectacle out of your wine. There are lots of quirky wine bottle holders out there that can be great table ornaments for encouraging conversation and adding to the theme.

These include floating wine bottle holders and wine bottle suits. You can also use themed wine bottle stoppers for adding a sense of fun.

Meanwhile, for a more sophisticated evening, you could store wine in a crystal decanter. As with flowers, avoid wine displays that are too big, as these could possibly get in the way.

An ice bucket with a champagne bottle in it might be better suited on the corner of the table or on a separate small table so that it’s not an obstruction.

Save space with multi-tier stands

For those with small dinner tables, you can prevent the table getting too cramped by investing in a multi-tier display stand. This can allow serving bowls of various foods to be stacked on top of one another so that less tabletop space is used.

There are lots of themed stands out there – finding one generic might allow you to pull it out at multiple dinner parties in the future.

Personalize place names

You can also add excitement to the evening with creative place names. You could give everyone a character for the evening or use people’s nicknames.

You could even make it a game by putting people’s names in code and having a chart on the wall – Chinese alphabet for a Chinese meal or morse code for a James Bond-themed meal.

Eating outdoors?

If you’re going for an al fresco dinner party, you may want to consider a few outdoor practicalities to make sure that your evening goes smoothly. To stop the tablecloth blowing away, you may want to buy some clips to keep it securely on.

Wasp traps and citronella candles meanwhile could help to ward off bugs in the height of summer. As for the threat of rain, consider buying a gazebo to shelter your table from the elements – this will stop everyone having to run indoors for cover.

Having a dinner party is fun and easy to decorate your table for. Set the mood with candles, place a pretty tablecloth, bring on the wine, add some place cards and voila!