Formal dinners are great events! People take a break their busy lives and come together. There’s food and wine, laughter and joy! What a great way to enjoy the evening.
Everything sounds so good. Well, not so much on the hosts’ side. Arranging a formal dinner is no easy feat, it becomes even more stressful if you are a perfectionist. While the others enjoy, you are in constant fear of making silly mistakes. There’s no need to be afraid, just enjoy the fruit of your labor and relax for a while.
Formal dinners could be held for variety of reasons – a family reunion, festivals, Thanksgiving, celebration of a business deal, receptions and what not. It becomes imperative for the host to leave a good impression. And that’s where the fear of failure sprouts from.
To ease your nerves and help you arrange the best dinner possible, we are giving some pro tips in this blog. Read on.
The focal point of any formal dinner is the dinner table! Now the question is how to setup a perfect formal dinner table, here’s how:-
Getting the Basics Right
For a beautiful looking dinner table, make sure you set it up right, with things that complement each other, right from the cutlery to the napkin and tissue holders. If there’s a miss-match, don’t panic, you can easily get most things online, from napkin and tissue holders to cutlery and glassware.
Setting up the Table
1. The first rule is to learn all the rules, be comfortable, and then break them with confidence to add a dash of your personality.
2. A perfect table setting is based on logic. Guests begin eating by using flatware at the outside left and right and work towards the plate as the meal proceeds. Stemware is placed above and to the right of the dinner plate. To the left above of the dinner plate, sit the bread-and-butter plates.
3. Remember to align the flatware with the bottom rim of the charger (a large plate), usually removed after guests have spread their napkins on their laps. For family dinners, there’s a custom of using napkin rings. You can buy napkin holders online while choosing the one that goes well with the theme of your dinner table.
4. Coming on the arrangement of drinks, the water glass sits atop the dinner knife, white wine is put on its right and red wine top center.
5. For serving soup, a heated soup dish is used on a dinner plate. Soup is eaten using the soup spoon at the outer right.
6. Entre is served on a mid-sized plate and is eaten by using the short, broad fork at the outer left and knife at the outer right. After eating, guests are expected to place their silverware diagonally across the plate.
7. For the main course, a large pre-heated plated is served, empty if the main course is to be served on the table itself, or with the main course in it. This has to eaten with the dinner fork and knife.
8. For the next salad course, a mid-size plate is served. Salad may be served at the table itself or could be brought in the plate. After completing this course, all the bread-butter plates, butter knife, wine glasses, salad plate and forks are taken away, leaving the table for dessert.
9. Dessert arrives in a small dessert plate alongside a coffee or teacup and a teaspoon. Cake fork and dessert spoon is used which from the top before the meal began. Water glass is the only stemware kept on the table at this point.
10. This concludes the dinner. Now the guests leave the table and may choose to indulge in cigar smoking and brandy sipping elsewhere.