Hello, hello! I am trying to spend less time on the computer, which is why this post is so late. I mean to write something soon about having dinner parties.
Here at Seraphic Singles, we are against women asking men out on dates but we are all for women inviting men to their parties, especially dinner parties. For parties, you can spend as much money as you like, dress to kill, cook up a storm, bake cookies, urge a man to have another drink and generally dote on a chap--as long as you are urging and doting on your other guests, too.
Solicitous, attentive behaviour that might scare the living daylights out of a man on a date is completely acceptable in a hostess. You can and should say things like "May I take your coat? What a handsome coat! Can I get you a drink? Please come through to the sitting-room and be introduced!"
Personally, I love to run away with a handsome man's coat. I mean, I did. Before I was married, etc. Ahem.
More on parties tomorrow, I hope.
7 comments:
Do you have any suggestions for those of us who reside with family members and cannot host dinner parties?
Good question, Southern Catholic Girl - and it does not only concern those living with family, but also those singles who live in very small flats where throwing large parties is out of question.
And sorry to be ahead of Auntie Seraphic in my suggestions, but perhaps you can arrange something at your local presbytery (I remember a married couple doing this while they had a tiny flat), you can do it together with a friend who has a bigger house or is living alone or book a table in a small cafe if you can afford. There is plenty of possibilities and I'm sure there will be more to go here!
I don't live with my parents while I'm in grad school, but I may well need to at some point in the job search, and I think they'd be okay with my having a party - it'd just be up to me to make sure everything was clean (although I probably wouldn't be without some help and ideas). I also am fine with my parents and younger siblings being around, but maybe this is part of that age thing - I was raised hanging out with my parents' friends (often more interesting conversation than my peers) and I have lived in Europe.
For small flats, you have two options: smaller party (doable, especially if any roommates are flexible) or co-host at someone else's house (last year for Thanksgiving a friend with more space graciously acted as host - I had the year before but we moved and didn't have the space). My roommates and I have had guests and parties - we are all pretty respectful so we've just asked each other. Could that not work? I guess if it's a tense roommate situation perhaps not, but don't think you can't have get togethers just based on space. :-)
~Nzie
I have managed dinner for four in a tiny bachelor flat. And I like the presbytery idea. Some might have the option of setting up table and chairs in the garden behind their house or building, but this really very much depends on the weather.
One strength of the dinner party is that movement is controlled, and people stay put, so you really can get away with having a dinner party.
If I had borrowed a long enough table, I think I could have turned my tiniest bachelorette into a dining-room big enough for eight. That would have been very amusing: just one big room for eating in, plus the kitchen, plus the bathroom. (My bed was a futon, which I daily folded into a couch.) After supper in such a small space, I would propose a walk--or that my second-in-command take the party for a refreshing walk--and then transform the dining-room into a bed-sitter again, where all could have a nightcap or a cup of tea.
*in a small, sparsely furnished flat.
SCG, I recommend the picnic. We just had one today. In summer, nothing is nicer than a cookout at a park or basket at a riverside. I think these are generally potluck, or they are when we do it.
I have never hosted a formal dinner party. Not sure I've even been to one, unless Thanksgiving at Grandma's counts. But I like to host informal lunches and dinners, the kind where you hold your plate in your lap and children wander from one room to another in search of chips and pickles. Again, potluck.
Warning: even if you have a potluck, you still have to bring the main dish; charcoal, paper plates, cups, and cutlery if it's a picnic (because no one will think of those if you don't); and at least one thing to drink. People are sadly unpredictable when it comes to bringing food. I don't think I will host another potluck unless everyone gets back to me ahead of time with what they're bringing. Last potluck I had, my guests brought cake, brandy, and nothing. So I was glad to have made several dishes, and wished I'd made more.
But this has motivated me very much to have a dinner party. I wish now that I had more than two friends within 50 miles.
Now that I think of it, I suppose my Orphans' Thanksgivings are dinner parties. I host one every year for everyone I know who has no family/ lives too far from family/ is estranged from family. It's always a good time, though now that I've read how to do a dinner party properly, I'm quite abashed. I do them all wrong!
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