Planning a Formal Dinner

Most people set their tables rather informally these days for any number of valid reasons, the lack of time being the main one. Who has time to fuss over linens, crystal, and china, much less polish the silver?

However, if you're planning a formal dinner, do make a special effort. On these occasions attention to detail and doing things right are important.

Place Cards

When you are entertaining more than eight guests for dinner, use place cards even if you have a seating chart.

Place cards are either folded tents or single cards meant to lie flat on the table. The tent-style cards have the advantage of standing up on the table so that you can write the name on both sides. In this way, others at the table can see who's sitting where.

The most elegant and costly place cards are made of thick white or off-white stock, with a narrow border of silver, gold, or another color. They measure about 2 by 31⁄2 inches, and you can purchase them from a good stationer or jeweler.

Never hesitate to make your own place cards from materials readily available in your home. If they serve the purpose, use them.

Place cards can go in any of the following locations on your table:

• On top of a napkin, set in the middle of the plate
• On the table at the upper left of the place setting (above the forks)
• Leaning against the stem of a water or wine glass
• On the table, just above the middle of the plate in the place setting

Write the names in black ink. You may type them for a business meal. The important thing is to make sure the names are readily legible and large enough to see from across the table. If possible, use calligraphy on them or have someone do it for you.

If all the guests know each other at an informal dinner, just write the first name of each person on his or her card. If two or more guests have the same first name, use first and last names on their cards. If not all of the guests know each other, use both names on all of the cards.

At a formal dinner party, such as a business dinner or official function, or any meal at which persons of rank will be present, use only surnames on the cards, for example, Mr. Fleischmann. If two Mr. Fleischmanns are at the table, use full names on their cards: Mr. Daniel Fleischmann.

Use the full titles of military officers and persons who hold or have held political or high appointed office, whether or not they still hold that office or title.

Place cards for the mayor and governor read The Mayor and The Governor. If they no longer hold those offices, the cards read Mayor Rendell and Governor Ridge.

Once an ambassador, always an ambassador. And a military officer is called by his or her retired rank forever.

Menu Cards

Menu cards can make a dinner more of an event. They also provide useful information to those concerned about diet. For example, knowing that the entree is poached fish might give a dieter license to finish off the cream soup or look forward to enjoying the dessert with a clear conscience.

Menu cards may be typed, done in calligraphy, or written in black ink. Lean them against a glass, rest them flat on the table to the left of the forks, or lay them centered over the plate above the dessert fork and spoon. Two guests may share one card, or each may have his or her own.

Write the date or the occasion at the top of the card. The courses follow in a vertical list. Wines may or may not be included.

Setting the Formal Table

Here's what you need:

• Table decorations (centerpiece). When it comes to table decorations, many interesting variations and options are possible. Some examples of these decorations include flowers, fruits and vegetables, collections of figurines, and candles.
• Butter plate and knife. These go to the upper left of your plate above the forks. The butter knife is placed horizontally across the top of the plate with the blade facing down. Some hosts place a few butter pats on the butter plate just before seating the guests, although it's also fine to pass a small plate containing butter pats with a butter knife for guests to help themselves.
  Don't own butter plates? Don't worry. Pass around a small dish containing butter pats or balls. You can also use a dish into which you have spooned soft butter or margarine from a plastic tub, or a decorative container that disguises the plastic tub of butter or margarine by fitting around it perfectly. Pass around a butter knife or other small knife with the container so that guests can serve themselves. Guests should take from the container what they want, put it on the side of their plates, and pass the container to the next person.
• Salad plates. Salad plates range in diameter from about 7½ to 8½ inches. (Salad plates can also be used for dessert, to hold soup cups and saucers, or to serve small food items.) Many people don't have salad plates and simply put their salads onto dinner plates. Also, a separate salad fork is nice but not necessary. It is no great hardship to eat your salad with your dinner fork.
  If, however, you are serving a separate salad and cheese course between the entrée and dessert, each guest will need a salad fork and a small knife as well. The sequence is this: The salad plates should be in front of all guests at the center of the place setting. Then pass the salad bowl, followed by a cheese tray with a cheese knife. Next pass the crackers. You can choose to follow the crackers with softened butter and a butter knife if guests have a coronary death wish.
• Napkins. These are best folded and placed in the center of the plate. However, they can also go to the left of the forks or can be folded imaginatively in the glassware. If you are an avid napkin folder, you can pick up some books on the subject and enjoy this opportunity to be creative.
• Flatware. Set the table so that people eat with utensils from the outside in. As a guest, when in doubt, this practice is always a pretty safe bet. Another idea is to single out the classiest-looking, most composed person at the table and do what that person does. If you are wrong, at least you will be in good company.
  The dessert fork and spoon can go horizontally at the top of the plate, the bowl of the spoon facing left and the prongs of the fork facing right. You don't need both, but the fork often makes a useful “pusher” for the dessert. You can also serve dessert implements with the dessert.
• Glassware. “Drink right, eat left” means that glasses go on the right and bread and butter plates go on the left. In other words, if you hold the fork in your left hand, you'd drink with your right hand.
• Salt and pepper shakers. Place a pair of salt and pepper shakers at each end of the table. If you have a large supply of them, it's nice to provide a pair for each guest or a pair between two guests. Sometimes people use saltcellars, which are tiny receptacles for loose salt. These have a tiny spoon either in them or on the table next to them.
• Candles. Use candles only at an evening meal. Place them in the center of the table or elsewhere, as long as you make the arrangement visually appealing and keep candles out of your guests' sight lines.

Many people also place candy dishes on the table, and it is a nice, sweet touch. Place one at each end. You can use a small dish or bowl or even a stemmed glass. A good idea is to include small, excellent chocolates.

Serving the Meal

Form follows function when you are serving the meal. Before you entertain, review the principles yourself and most certainly with any people you have hired to help you.

• Serve guests from the left. The utensils should be positioned on the platter in a way that's convenient for the guest to reach them. Keep your arms close to the body to avoid banging people. The idea is to give the diner convenient access to the food.
• Starting points. The woman on the host's right is served first. If the man on the hostess's right is the guest of honor, he is served first. After that, service goes around the table counterclockwise.
• If a couple are guests of honor, then the wife sitting next to the male host is served first. The service goes counterclockwise and ends with the host.
• Finished plates are removed from the right side. A good trick is to use your thumb or otherwise contrive to anchor utensils to the plate so they don't end up in people's laps. Never scrape or stack plates while removing them.
• Wine is served and removed from the right side.

After-Dinner Coffee

After-dinner coffee comes in demitasse cups and saucers with small coffee spoons. The cup, saucer, and spoon are to the right of the guest's place setting. Coffee is served from the right, as are other beverages. Then pass a tray with cream, sugar, and a sugar substitute.

Alternatively, the host can place a large tray containing the coffee service on the table and then pass filled cups to each person.

If you have serving help, you might want to serve coffee away from the dining table, or you can carry the entire coffee service into the living room to pour. In this case, each guest comes up to the host to receive his coffee.

Cordials are served with coffee. You can also ask guests whether they would care for water.

Preparing and serving a dinner for your guests can be as easy or as difficult as you desire. A good idea is to decide well in advance how much effort you are prepared to expend, make a plan, and stick to it. Whatever you decide, your guests will be appreciative.

Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Etiquette © 2004 by Mary Mitchell. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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