A successful dinner party table includes not just food and florals, but personality-infused ambience.
Food & Entertaining
A Dinner to Remember
Creating a certain mood for your upcoming party is just as important as the evening’s menu.

Remember your grandmother’s table for family dress-up dinners? Most likely it was a somber, composed affair where everything was monochromatic and neatly coordinated, with a centerpiece featuring the season’s best (Mums? Daisies? Poinsettias?) gracing the middle of the linen-topped table. Candlesticks flanked the floral arrangement, serving pieces matched her china pattern, and the meal was as predictable as the decor itself.

Modern entertaining is defined by a delicious collision of imagination, ingenuity and panache, and when the dust settles, guests are treated to a form of theater as interpreted by their host or hostess. Today’s sophisticated party mavens subscribe to a mantra of emotional and harmonious style elements when it comes to dazzling entertaining. Table decor, centerpieces and accessories have morphed into “tablescapes” and reflect an individual’s personality, making the mood created by the ambience of a party as essential as the meal itself. 

When it comes to executing the perfect at-home soiree — whether it’s a family holiday feast, an intimate dinner party or a festive buffet — some of Kansas City’s top designers and florists agree the key to a successful tablescape includes a bit of  old-fashioned planning.  

James Carver, owner and design guru  of Aesthetica, a hip home, decor and gift shop in the Crossroads Arts District, suggests you first identify the event’s theme. Is it a Chinese New Year party? A glamorous black-tie dinner? An informal gathering of friends for wine tasting and a tapas buffet? 

One of James’ tricks is to pull at least three elements together to convey the theme, like the centerpiece, table settings and menu. “Take the time to plan the details, but also be willing to edit something if it doesn’t work,” he notes. He keeps a journal with sketches, clippings and ideas that inspire and influence him, and he uses it as a personal reference book.

“The upfront, surface details are crucial when entertaining because the goal is to convey a message and offer an experience to your guests, not just throw a fabulous dinner on the table,” he says. “You want to emotionally transport your guests somewhere, and when people are energized and excited, that happens instantly.”

When it comes to centerpieces, florist Sheryl White, owner of Brookside’s Fiddly Fig, loves using treasured heirlooms as  containers for spectacular arrangements. “I often encourage clients to rummage around at home and use a piece with sentimental value,” she says, “like a silver bowl or an epergne.” While most of her entertaining these days leans toward casual because of children, she always gravitates toward found objects in her home to add interest to the table: a vintage turkey tureen filled with bittersweet and berries, a cake stand topped with small vases and single blooms, a crystal bowl from her wedding 21 years ago with a pavé-style cluster of flowers, and her mother-in-law’s antique pitcher filled with sticks and twigs.

Sheryl also likes groupings of vases in different sizes and shapes on a table to create a dramatic visual. “Clumps of flowers displayed in clear glass vases, accented by candles, is a sophisticated approach to adding floral to the table,” she says. She also encourages people to consider a centerpiece above the table — in a chandelier — for a chic alternative to the traditional tabletop arrangement. “Hang votive cups filled with flowers, trail fresh ivy from the fixture and add some candles,” she suggests.

A trend that Sheryl has warmed to is wrapping the inside of a clear vase with curly willow or a large, tropical leaf — an ingenious way to spark up an arrangement while camouflaging unsightly stems. “Today, it’s almost as important what’s inside the vase as what’s coming out of it,” she remarks.

The grocery store is a great resource for fresh fruits and vegetables to layer in containers; Sheryl especially likes green apples for a punch of color in any arrangement. And of course the first and  last rule, she cautions, is that guests can easily converse without looking over or around a centerpiece.

Lori Keairns, a manager at Prairie Village’s Ranchview Floral and Interiors, suggests the building block approach to   floral arrangements: Select the dominant and secondary flowers, the filler and a visual element like curly willow. “Once you’ve finished the arrangement, walk around it, leave the room and come back to make sure everything’s balanced to your eye,” she says.

Lori likes to scavenge her own yard for greenery when designing at home. “When purchasing a prepackaged bunch of flowers at the grocery store, frequently you’ll need greens to complete the look,” she says. Her trick: Simply trim snippets from evergreens or other bushes or trees for instant filler.

And like Sheryl, Lori can go crazy in the produce section at the market, scooping up limes, artichokes, chilies and even fresh ginger root to create organic centerpieces. “I use color as the emotional part of the arrangement, to bring life to the design,” she says.

Diane Boone Crouse, creative director at Arcadian in Overland Park and managing partner of Event-Studio, spins her visual magic into stunning buffet designs. “Lots of hosts and hostesses opt for the buffet approach to entertaining, and it’s a real opportunity to stage a beautiful party,” Diane says.

She has an admitted out-of-the-box streak to her creative nature, and she parlays even the most humble of materials into action. For instance, she prowls the aisles of local DIY home stores for unusual serving pieces and decor. “Sometimes people fret because they don’t have a supply of large platters on hand for a buffet dinner,” she notes. “Buy cut sheets of Plexiglas, glass blocks and LED lights and voila, you have a fantastic tablescape,” Diane recommends. “Layer gorgeous table runners, add moss, river rocks and a couple of lamps to anchor both ends of the table, and you’ve got a guaranteed vibe to ‘wow’ guests.”

Diane is a serious student of color and always has her radar on for the latest trend. “This year it’s olive green — the ultimate organic color that goes with everything — and a flirty, super-hot saturated tangerine orange,” she notes.

Scrutinizing the design elements of a  buffet or dinner party, James concludes, is similar to weaving a thread into a tapestry. “It’s like connecting a series of dots when planning the decor, presentation and food; in the end, everything makes sense,” he says.