5 Simple Tips: Setting A Stylish Holiday Table

Entertain with elegance and glamour -set a chic and sophisticated holiday table. With these simple steps, make your guests feel completely honored, at ease, and a pinch envious.

1. Grab "A Patterned Table Covering"

Most creative endeavors start with a primary concept that serves as a directive for the coordinating elements. So, note your favorite colors of the season and grab patterned table covering with an all over print to suit. Whether its a tapestry from Urban Outfitters, a curtain panel from Pier One, or a bolt of fabric from a local textile star like Lewis & Sharon or Gayle K., with your primary concept secured the rest of the table will fall simply into place.

In fact, for the table in these images, I used a tapestry that I found at the house because at the last minute I failed to locate the duvet cover that I planned on using.

2. Set the table with white dinnerware.

Most people have white dinnerware. Always sophisticated, simple white will pop against your patterned table covering. Keeping the dinnerware white, means plates & salad plates do not have to match in order to coordinate. Need to add an extra place setting? Use all white and you can borrow one from a friend, no mismatching misdemeanor incurred. Plus, food looks like art on white dinnerware, that's why the restaurants use it almost exclusively.

3. Create a "Centerpiece Runner" with candles, candle, candles*.

Tall centerpieces look out of date- as we have come to value talking to guests' faces-rather than at them, you know, i.e. through the flowers between us. So instead of creating a tall centerpiece, create a train of interest down the center of the table over which guest can easily converse. Exclusively using the colors from your "Patterned Table Covering", gather items for a centerpiece runner. Allow your color palette to dictate selections. Be open to traditional options like flowers* and seasonal vegetables or fruits*, but willing to experiment with more contemporary ideas like wheat grass* and even Foo dogs. For this particular table, I interspersed gourds and a variety of glass Ball jars (which I would have loved to first fill with orange m&ms) with votives on a swatch of red mattress ticking fabric.

4. Ease up and weave in some personality.

Mix high and low, add regional touches and give your guests something to talk about.

High & Low:

Don't hesitate to ditch the linens. Because prissy means proper and proper usually does not mean fun, I swopped prissy linen napkins for coordinating vintage looking dish towels.

Regional touches:

My napkin rings? You might notice that I used the rings on the lids of my Ball jars, as napkin rings. Hey, they are GOLD, right! Ball jars are just as indicative of the South as my grandmother's long drawl.

Something To Talk About:

And finally, my place cards: I stuck the middle of round Ball jar lid into an orange cork, by very carefully sawing a slit into the cork. I could easily argue against the formality of place cards, but ultimately I like how personal they are. Guests can just move their place cards, if they want to sit elsewhere-I don't care. I just like how place cards look on the table.

5. Get Glamor.

Add some colored stemware (Veranda red goblets as pictured above from Target), bring out some crystal (try DollarTree, as pictured below- not kidding), lay down a little gold (Gold Band Porcelain Dinnerware, Target)!

Glamour can come from your grandmother's Waterford or Target's shelves, guests do not care and neither do I.

Regardless glamour reigns. Get some.

Oh yeah and swop out the gourds & tapestry and you're almost ready for Christmas!

P.S. One of dearest friends, Anjali C. is taking her medical boards today. Anj & I have been pals since sharing a gym class together in 7th grade. We went on to share a tiny 10'x10' dorm room as roommates at UGA...and we're still friends. To follow in her mom's footsteps and help kids & babies feel better has been Anjali's dream as long I have known her. Please cross your fingers for my buddy today.

Go, Anj, go!