There is something special about hosting a dinner party. It’s your ultimate chance to feed your friends and loved ones, to prepare excellent food, to have some scintillating conversation, and to generally be a wonderful host (my favorite part). Planning a dinner party is exciting, and you also get to show off your skill in the kitchen as well as your lovely home at the same time as making people feel happy.
Unfortunately, having a dinner party might not be possible right at this moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be planning one for when the time is right. Plus, the more preparation work you put into your dinner party, the less stressed you’ll come to be on the night – the last thing any successful dinner party needs is an anxious host who can’t enjoy themselves.
With all this in mind, I’ve put together some fantastic tips for hosting a successful dinner party that will ease your mind and allow you to organize yourself fully. Planning is the best part in my opinion.
Make Familiar Foods
The biggest element of planning a dinner party, and the one that causes the most worry, is the food. The mistake that many people make is choosing dishes that are fancy and look delicious, but that take many hours to make and are very fiddly when you get started. As well as this, these dishes tend to be unfamiliar.
It’s good to try new things in the kitchen, but perhaps not when you have a tableful of people coming round and you want to enjoy the evening as much as your guests.
This is why it’s best to choose tasty but simple foods that are familiar to you. If it’s a recipe you’ve cooked many times before for your family, and it looks attractive, then why not cook it again for your dinner party guests? If you really do want to offer your guests something different because they’ve already eaten your other dishes, at least make the time to practice the new food in advance to make sure you know what to do and how to do it.
On the subject of food, always plump for dishes that can be made in advance, or that don’t need much preparation. In this way, you can be present at the table with your guests rather than in the kitchen missing out. As a courtesy ask your guests if there are any food allergies. The last thing you will want is a liability on your hands.
Décor
Making amazing food and inviting interesting people to your home for a special dinner party is exciting, and the food and conversation should be enough to make it enjoyable, but to really make it memorable you should dress up the room or at least the table, and ideally with a theme. A lot of times the theme is about the reason you are planning a dinner party in the first place.
Speak to a florist and have some beautiful fresh flowers delivered to use in your decoration, for example. You could have bouquets around the house or a centerpiece on the table itself. A Christmas party often looks splendid with poinsettia and holly leaves entwined in a display, and in springtime, it’s great to have bright, colorful blooms in pride of place.
Candles also always look sophisticated, especially if you have attractive candlesticks for them to rest in. It’s best not to use scented candles, though; this can be unpleasant when you are trying to eat, and if you already have the natural scent of the flowers you won’t want to overdo things. Don’t have the candles too tall, though, or conversation across the table might be a struggle.
The really important thing to take into consideration is the color scheme. Have one main color (silver or blue is always timeless, although red or green at Christmas works well) and have everything match or complement that. Your table setting will look stunning if you bear this one tip in mind.
Clean As You Work
It can be hard to take a moment to stop and look around you when you’re cooking, especially if you’ve got into the rhythm of things in the kitchen, but it’s worth doing. By stopping when you can and giving yourself a little time to tidy up, load the dishwasher, do some washing up, or put food away and trash in the bin you will have a tidier kitchen to work in, and that’s very useful. The tidier your workspace, the more relaxed and at ease you will feel.
On top of that, if you can clean as you work, you won’t have so much to do when your dinner party is over. I tend to carry on conversations or have a glass of wine while I load the dishwasher. It’s not a pleasant feeling to have had a wonderful time and a successful dinner party and then to have to clean everything up before you can finally go to bed. And leaving things until the morning might be tempting, but it’s usually not a good idea!
Clean as you go and your kitchen will look great if your guests come into it, plus you’ll be able to relax at the end of your party with nothing to do.
Send Guests off With a Treat!
One of my favorite things to do is have a takeaway. It can be something as small as a cookie or as big as you like. It gives guests a reason to remember the night and the fabulous dinner you hosted. Plus, it’s a little something extra they probably weren’t expecting. A few of my favorite takeaways are individually wrapped cookies (the more personalized the better), samples if it was a product party, flowers, or a self-development token like a gratitude jar. You can easily come up with something that is true to you and your event.
Planning event dinners should not be a stressful or scary thing. In fast, I look forward to them. I want that for everyone. Any reason to plan a party is good enough for me. What are some of your planning tips? Let’s chat in the comments below!
