Choosing to host a dinner party is pretty normal at this time of year. People want to get together and have Christmas dinners with their friends, they want to enjoy time together over the festive season, and they really want to be able to embody the whole idea that Christmas is about family and love. They’re not wrong, but when it comes to your time to be the host you may feel a bit nervous about the idea.
It’s not just the fact that you have to prepare your house to make sure it’s clean and tidy for your guests, but the fact that you want to pull off a great dinner party that people talk about for all of the right reasons and not the wrong ones. It doesn’t matter whether you serve Australian whisky, whether you have beer on tap in your own bar in the garden, or whether or not you choose to serve finger food over a sit down meal. This dinner party should be the best one that you have hosted yet, and we’ve got some tips below to help you to work through it to make sure that your dinner party is one of the best ones ever hosted. Let’s dive in and take a look.
- Hire A caterer. OK so this may take away from the whole point of being the host of a dinner party, but this is not Come Dine with Me! Just because you are hosting a dinner party doesn’t mean you have to cook the food. There are no rules to say that you have to be the person stuck in the kitchen cooking while everybody else is having a good time. This is one of the best reasons to hire A caterer in the first place. You can choose from a menu, and you can make sure that things are delivered to you and your guests at the table in a timely manner. If you love to cook you might not consider doing this, but even if you have to cook you could take away the stress and just enjoy a meal with your friends.
- Choose your menu carefully. Ideally you should know whether your friends have any allergies or particularly when it comes to food, but even if you don’t you should make sure that you are choosing your menu carefully so that everybody is going to be comfortable and happy with what you are serving for your dinner party. For example, if you have vegan friends or vegetarian friends, you might consider ensuring that there is at least one vegetarian option on your menu. You might also be considerate and serve up soft drinks as well as alcoholic drinks just in case you have those who prefer not to drink at the party. There should never be any issue when it comes to food, so make sure that you understand any allergies or dietary requirements before you host because the last thing you want is to have somebody come to your home and you can’t actually accommodate them.
- Decorate. From chair covers to flowers, you need your home to look like a little bit more of a professional place if you’re going to host a dinner party. For example, putting all the kids’ toys away and out of the room that you plan to use is going to help people to feel like they are in a luxurious place and not just somebody’s living room. Decorate with flowers to accentuate the table, and add decorations to the centerpiece of the table so that you have a professional look to your dinner party. Flowers can make the perfect decoration for almost every dinner party and you can make them seasonal so if your theme is Christmas you can use Christmas flowers.
- Prepare in advance. You should never wait till the last minute to prepare for a dinner party because you have no idea how stressful it can be to try and get everything wrapped up on time. Don’t worry about the stress; Prepare early and there won’t be any stress to worry about at all.
- Clean as you go. It might be tempting to say that you’ll just leave all the cleaning until the next day, but tomorrow you are really going to regret that choice! If you clean as you go and in between the meals, you’re not going to have too much to worry about by the time your guests leave and you want to just go to bed. If you’re hiring caterers, they should clean it up and do this for you. You could also hire A friend or a cousin or even a younger sibling to get involved in the clean up to help you out in exchange for money.
