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Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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Posted by thecameraobscura (My Page) on Fri, Feb 8, 08 at 19:22
| A very good article on how to seat guests at your dining room table |
Here is a link that might be useful: Read This Before You Seat One Guest!
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| Bloody James Swan again! Not only is he shilling his own pages, but the writing style is poor (some sentences don't even scan) and the basic premise is flawed- a large round table with 12 people all holding simultaneous conversations is WAY too noisy. Anyway, wasn't the Golden Rule always no fewer at the table than the Graces, and no more than the Muses? |
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| Has he been here before? I couldn't read that nonsense about vestal virgins and crap. |
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| Sorry, I don't know bloody James Swan. We frequently entertain friends for dinner, usually 8 or 10 people. We have a long rectangular table as do most folks. Most of the time we sit spouces across the table from each other which means you have other people seated on both sides of you. For the most part, everyone knows or is aquainted with everyone else at the dinner. We have several sets of friends, church, social, business and neighborhood. The only time we mingle these groups is at our annual Christmas Eve party. If there is a down side to all of this, occasionally you will get someone who monopolizes the conversation usually with all their ailments. You just make the best of the situation and try to redirect the conversation. If this doesn't work, they may not be invited back. |
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| What really bugs me is when the centerpiece (usually the flowers) are so high that you can't see the face of the person in front of you. Huge centerpieces are fine when nobody is sitting at the table. When you have a table full of guests, you should change to a smaller centerpiece so that everyone can see each other. |
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| Since this has turned into a serious conversation, I agree on the centerpiece. Use small, or remove it completely for seating. Here's another tip: if you must burn candles at the table, make sure they are at a safe height and placement. I once went to a dinner party where the hostess put lit tealight candles at the front of everyone's placesetting. The linen in the breadbasket caught on fire, and at least two guests' sweaters were burned! The hostess left the tealights lit -- I was amazed. lol! |
RE: Tips on Seating the Dining Room Table
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| Okay, I'll chime in, too -- My mother gave me good advice: keep a dinner party small enough -- 8 is a good number -- so that you can have ONE conversation going (with some attention on the part of the hosts). I'm talking about what we call "grown-up dinner parties" -- not holidays or casual groups. Also, I don't seat spouses next to each other. The conversation is better if you mix people up a bit. Also, it sort of treats each person as an individual, not part of a couple, which changes the dynamic and also is considerate of single guests, who either feel self-consciously alone or else as if they are being matched up with another single. To avoid intrusive centerpieces, I like to use a lot of little vases instead of one big arrangement. This also makes it easier to use smaller flowers from my garden in the summer. I don't know whether this guy has any good tips, but on principle I won't go to his site! |
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