‘Tis the season when you host, a lot. As the sun shines longer and spring turns into summer, we’re excited for our favourite extra-curricular activity to return: the dinner party. Sure, the dinner party is a year-round occasion but this time of year we dial up the frequency.
There’s extra public holidays, extra daylight hours, and extra fun to be had. There’s the end-of-year gatherings, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, but then there’s the impromptu dinner parties, where lazy Saturday afternoons morph into dinner al fresco on the deck – and we’re here for it all (and have just the right tablecloth to get the job done).
Here’s our Bonnie and Neil guide to elevating your next dinner party that will leave your guests seriously impressed and eagerly-but-not-so-patiently awaiting your next dinner invite.
Set the playlist
Sure conversation is king but background music is an essential to any good dinner party. Considering most of us have had our Spotify algorithms hijacked by other members of the family (hello The Wiggles back catalogue), we always make the extra effort to curate a dinner party playlist to ensure the music playing reminds us of that one summer in Cinque Terre and not the playground on a Saturday morning.
Make the playlist personal and ask your guests to send through their three favourite songs before the dinner party kicks off, adding them to the playlist, and ensuring there’s a little eardrum hum for everyone.
Kick things off with aperitivo hour
We’re definitely not going to waste those extra rays of daylight and will be soaking up as much Vitamin D as we can by bringing a little bit of Euro summer to our backyard with the Italian tradition of aperitivo hour.
Invite your guests over early and satiate their palettes with refreshing jugs of Aperol spritz, crostini with white anchovies, melon wrapped in prosciutto, bowls of Sicilian olives, and salty, crispy chips. It’s heaven on a snack plate, and light work for you, when you consider most prep is a slice and serve affair.
Don’t forget the ambient lighting!
Whether you're eating inside or outside, lighting is crucial to your dinner party – no one wants to eat their main under the intensity of a down light!
For those eating inside, dim the lights or turn off the overhead lights in lieu of candles and the soft, diffused light of a lamp – your home will feel like a trattoria in seconds. And for those eating outside, the sun will set eventually, and when that happens the flood light will feel more reminiscent of an interrogation than social gathering – so make sure you cue up the festoon lighting or portable lamps before.
Game, set, (mix and) match the table setting
We promise we don’t just host dinner parties so we can flex our Bonnie and Neil table linen, napery and homewares collection to our guests (it’s just a convenient bonus). But we can’t deny we love setting the table – it sets the scene, the mood, everything!
We love to mix prints and patterns with small and large scale prints, and we never tire of pairing the same print in different colourways across the tablecloth and napery. Our leafy Margot print is your perfect dinner party companion and will make every meal feel like a celebration, especially when styled with our enamel serveware and some coloured glassware.
Embrace your inner florist
The quickest shortcut to transforming your everyday table setting into an ‘event worthy’ table is with fresh cut flowers. Whether you visit your local florist and are lucky enough to snip some blooms straight from your garden, we love to adorn our dinner party table with little floral vignettes and arrangements in our Bonnie and Neil carafes.
Our styling tip? Run your floral arrangements in small vases or coloured glassware along the center of the table – the more the merrier – just make sure you leave room for your food. Now, all that’s left to do is feast.
Photography by Martina Gemmola and Styling by Natalie Turnbull.
