Hosting a dinner party for your friends or family members can be stressful and time-consuming to prepare. The perfect host will make everyone at the dinner party feel at ease. If you, for example, know that there are tensions between people or specific friends with opposing views and you might know that there will be a clash between them, do not seat them next to each other. If you want your dinner party to go perfectly, here are some tips that might help you with achieving just that:
- Decide on a theme of the party – the theme does not have to be strict and your guests do not have to follow it, but it will help you and serve as a guideline for the types of dishes you will prepare, as well as the table setting. It will also stop you from getting overwhelmed by a variety of choices you have. Even something simple, like a “spring” theme, will help you create a menu (you can implement fresh vegetable, lamb, asparagus, radishes, for a spring theme), and the table setting (white dishes, bread or rolls served in a woven basket, a bouquet of spring flower, etc.)
- Use your whole space for entertainment – Keep your guests busy all the time, and they will not be annoyed and will not leave your party. For adults, create a place where they can relax from their daily work and socialize with others while drinking fresh cocktails or smoothies. Make sure that your guests’ children are amusing as well to guarantee their parents a fun time. One of the easiest ways for that is by bringing custom-shaped inflatables to your backyard and bringing joy to your little guests. Companies like Floatie Kings allow their customers to be creative and make their dream inflatables. Bouncy houses, tiny water slides, and interactive games are the most amazing and playful inflatables for the little ones.
- Plan the menu ahead of time – write down what meals you are planning on making, and read through the recipes for each of the dishes. You could also make notes, like the prep time, cooking time, and the cooking method. If you realize that you will need to have three dishes in the oven at the same time, but your oven only has two racks, you might want to think about changing one of the menu options.
- Check if some of your guests have special diet requirements – one of the most frustrating things is taking a lot of time to prepare the food, just to find out that some of your friends cannot eat it due to a food allergy or diet restriction. Before planning the menu, always check with your invited guests if some of them have food allergies.
- Make a dessert that does not have to be fresh from the oven – desserts like rice pudding, cakes, cupcakes, and tarts can be made the day before and kept in the fridge overnight. With these desserts, you will want to take them out of the fridge at least 4 hours before they are served in order to allow them to come to room temperature.
- Think about the beverages – while it might be easy just to rely on a bottle of red wine to serve alongside dinner, you will need to think about it differently. Firstly, make sure that the people who are non-drinkers have something to drink. And secondly, try to choose the beverage choice according to your menu. For example, a bottle of Moscato white wine goes perfectly with spicy, sour, salty, and bitter foods. So, in order to choose the right beverage, make sure that you know with what food they go with.
- Do not forget to choose music – music makes a big difference in any situation, hence you should choose something that is easy to listen to.
- Accept that things might go wrong – burning the main course is not a good thing, however, it will probably turn into a funny story within the group of people that are at the dinner party, so you will need to accept that something might go wrong during the evening.
Conclusion
One of the most important things to remember is to have fun! You did do all the hard work by preparing everything for the dinner party, so now that your friends or family members have arrived, give yourself a little bit of a break, and relax a little bit with them.
