Planning a Perfect Dinner Party

When it comes to gathering your friends together to celebrate an occasion or just to have fun, there’s nothing better than a dinner party. Throwing the perfect dinner party may be on your agenda this week, but you need to remember that there is no such thing as real perfection. Perfection comes when you can manage the stress of planning a dinner party, juggle the cooking, and come to the table feeling like you’re part of the party.

There are so many ways that you can ensure that this is the case, and that means choosing someone to help you or planning enough in advance that it doesn’t feel stressful to do so. This means ordering your wines and your drinks early, planning your food menu early, and making sure that you get the invites out weeks in advance so that you have plenty of time to prepare. Let’s take a look at how you can plan the perfect dinner party.

• Choose food and drinks that you love. A dinner party doesn’t have to be something pretentious. You don’t have to serve anything like foam that tastes like carrot in the same way that Heston Blumenthal would. Think about what you and your friends like to eat and then make that. If your favorite meal is lasagna with garlic bread on the side, then make that. If your favorite food happens to be sushi, then call in a chef and ask them to make you sushi for dinner. The best parties are the ones where people can enjoy the food.
• Ask your friends for input. If you’re hosting a dinner party, you want to make sure that you’ve ordered drinks in advance that people will actually drink. Pairing your food with different wines and beers is great, but what are their favorite drinks and which are their favorite mixes? Things like this will help a dinner party to be something memorable because it shows that you care about the people that you’re cooking for. Having a checklist of things to eat is great so make sure that you’re asking for input so that everybody can enjoy it.
• Plan everything out. You should have a timeline for your meal, so you should know what time each course will be served and what time each drink will be offered. This can help you to keep everything spaced out so that you’re not just stuck in the kitchen cooking. Preparing your desserts and starters way in advance and only cooking dinner in the evening is going to help. If you’re cooking something like steak, which is to be done to order, you could always get a little bit luxurious and hire a chef to come and do it for you.
• Set the scene. Planning the dinner party and the food is one thing, but you also need to set the scene by setting the table and the decor as far ahead of time as you can. Setting out serving dishes and utensils for the food, figuring out the music, and considering the lighting options are going to help you to run your dinner party from start to finish with perfection.