Dinner Party Tips

Planning a dinner party? Our dinner party tips will help allay your fears and generally make life that little bit easier.

The tips are split into the following four sections:

Invitations

Planning

Setting the table

Etiquette

Dealing with smokers

How should the invitations to the dinner party be composed?

This dinner party tip is very important in terms of ensuring enough people turn up.

Invitations can be sent in the form of a letter, card or email. They should be sent out a good 4 weeks before the event. This will give you more time to prepare, as well as allowing them the chance to keep their diaries open.

You should always put an RSVP on the invites along with a deadline. The sooner you know the numbers, the sooner you can start to calculate the quantity of ingredients that will be needed.

Dress codes and themes should also be included within the confines of the invite, so everybody is singing from the same song sheet.

Another dinner party tip which will help ease your good housekeeping needs is to leave a section on the invite so that guests can state whether or not they are a vegans or vegetarians. They can jot down any allergies they have to certain foods too.

It may be a good idea to put directions on the invite to, there's nothing worse for the host and the guests themselves if they are late.

How should I prepare for a dinner party?

The first dinner party tip you need to adhere to in regards to preparation is when planning your event you take care in picking the right theme i.e. formal or informal as the décor, food, and dress code can reflect this.

When deciding what dishes to prepare for your party, an affective dinner party tip is to make sure you can actually cook the meal of choice. If you take something on which is too extravagant then you’ll only add to your stress levels, and that won’t do you or your guests any good. Remember, you can make something easy, very good and something hard, very bad.

In addition to the above dinner party tip it may be an idea to add foods to the menu which you can prepare before the dinner party, or foods that won’t keep you in the kitchen for most of the night; after all you can’t play host or hostess from there.

When thinking of a menu an important good housekeeping and party tip is to ensure that you don’t include dishes that are too hot and spicy, not everybody can handle this sort of food.

Once you have done this make a list of ingredients you need. Doing this will help ensure nothing is left out. There is nothing worse than being halfway through preparing a certain dish and realizing you haven’t got the right ingredients..

The key rule for choosing wine for your dinner party is to have white wine for white meats and red wine for red meats. Include soft drinks for those people who don’t drink or who are driving home.

For tips on choosing the right wine for your dinner party check out our Wine Guide

For a nice touch why not include a little memento for your guest to take home with them in the form of a favour?

Another excellent dinner party tip is when planning seating arrangements try to place talkative guests next to quieter ones this may help them come out of their shells. You can use name cards to ensure your guests don’t sit in the wrong places.

When choosing centerpieces for the table, don’t be too extravagant, if they are too big some guests may not be able to see certain people who are sitting around the table. If you must have a centerpiece then a nice candelabra should suffice.

How should I set the table for a dinner party?

This is quite an important dinner party tip especially for more formal occasions. The plate is placed in the center of the cutlery, with everything else going around it.

To the immediate left of the plate you will place the dinner fork, with the salad fork to the left of this.

To the immediate right of the plate the dinner knife will be placed, with the soup spoon sitting to its right N.B. The cutting edge the knife should always face inwards towards the plate.

At the immediate head of the plate the dessert fork is placed, with the head pointing to the right. Above this, the dessert spoon is placed, with its head pointing to the left. These are placed in those positions so they can be used with the correct hands i.e. the fork with the left hand and the spoon with the right.

Immediately to the left of the dessert cutlery the bread plate is placed, with the bread on top.

To the right of the dessert cutlery you place the water, red and white wine glasses. The placement of these should be kept the same for each setting.

The napkin can either be placed too the left of the forks, or on the salad plate, the choice is yours.

That’s it you’ve now got the perfect dinner party table.

What is the etiquette for a dinner party?

A nice dinner party tip and all part of good housekeeping etiquette is to see to it that you greet guests at the door and accept any gifts they bring in a gracious manner. If somebody gives you an expensive gift don’t try and give it back to them, after all if they want to give you an expensive present it’s their prerogative.

You should now take the coats of your guests and place them in a safe place.

When guests are settled you should have nibbles and drinks on hand and make them feel at ease.

Introduce guests who haven’t met before, to each other, this will act as an ice breaker. Don’t just introduce them by name then leave them alone. When you present them, tell each a little bit about the person, this should lead them into having a conversation.

If you decide on having a cold starter this should be ready on the table before you introduce your guests to their seats. On the other hand, if you decide to have a hot starter you need to seat your guests before serving it.

You need to keep your wits about you and make sure that guests don’t have empty glasses. They may feel really uncomfortable about helping themselves to the wine.

At the end of the main course all cutlery, plates, glasses and condiments which are no longer needed should be removed.

You need to be sitting the closest to the kitchen or serving area so you are not bumping into guests as you go about playing host or hostess.

How should I deal with smokers?

Now that the “smoking ban” - within public spaces - has been put in place, it’s best you don’t allow smokers to ‘light up’ at your party. I don’t mean ban them completely, that would be too autocratic, I mean at the table or in rooms where guests are mingling.

If you feel comfortable with people smoking in your home and you have enough space to afford this, why not have a smoking room for the night? This way anybody who wants to smoke can trot off to the said room and puff away.

However, if you’re not comfortable with guests smoking within your home, perhaps set up a smoking area in your garden (again, if this is feasible). Here you can put up a temporary gazebo or awning to shelter guest from the elements.

As with the any temporary smoking area, see to it that you prepare it well; place tables, comfortable chairs (Not too comfortable, mind you, you don’t want smokers to spend all night there), ashtrays and even breath freshener mints (make sure you do this discretely – you don’t want to offend anybody) in the room/area.

Thanks for taking your time to read our OPH Good Housekeeping and Homemaking dinner party tips page, I hope you find them useful.

We’re adding more dinner party tips pages all the time, so don’t forgot to visit sometime in the near future.

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