There’s nothing like feeling you’ve pulled off the party of the year…
The holiday season, which extends from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, is a joyful time. It can also be a mite stressful if you are trying to achieve an Instagram worthy look in your home, or a party that will be talked about for days/weeks/years after. You’ve pictured it in your mind’s eye, but the stretch is how to go from concept to completion?
The keys to the ideal holiday party are planning and themes. Yes, the holidays are in and of themselves the overarching theme, but you can create a cohesive look that will impress even your boss’ boss by embracing a few basic principles.
Elegant Holiday Color Schemes
This is the time to eschew the ubiquitous green and red.
Opt instead for tasteful golds, rose golds, and silver that light up the room. You can carry these through from ornaments and decorations to table accents and settings. Vases filled with gold and silver balls; sprays of eucalyptus wrapped and tied with gold ribbon; white lights on the tree. All create an understated but polished look.
Athena Console Table in Rose Gold
Or go ‘all natural’ with colors can be found in nature: forest greenery, holly berries, pine cones, mistletoe, cranberries and oranges. Silver birch votive holders and wrought iron accents would complete the look impeccably. Your guests will feel like they are in an old fashioned scene that is focused on the joys of the season.
Exquisite Table Settings
Whether you opt for the gold and silver, or the more natural look, carry that through to your table decorations and centerpiece.
Glass vases filled with greenery, set against a linen table setting and cream candles, uphold the natural decor. Add color pops with scatterings of cranberries or holly berries to bring all the colors together, adding warmth to the glow.
Let the same gold decorations from your living room bring a little sparkle to the table: Scattered metallic ornaments will flash with the candlelight and create a glow that your guests will love. Better still if they are ornamental pieces that each guest can take home, at the end of the evening, like a big kid’s loot bag.
You can even mix the vases of greenery with the metallic decorations to get a little bit of both looks.
Chic Room Design
If you’re just doing cocktails and canapes, instead of a sit-down dinner, plan your room so that people will need to circulate through it, unimpeded by furniture, to get to the nibbles. One table for drinks, another for warm canapes and a third for sweets. Move bulkier furniture out of the way and offer seating with benches, ottomans and stools that are easy to place throughout the room without creating a tripping hazard.
Bella Storage Ottoman in Black
Sophisticated Party Touches
If your space (or your style) doesn’t permit for a tree, you can still create a festive look with a floor vase with tree branches and white lights, or go funkier with a rosemary topiary. It will be fragrant and elegant, and will last you well into January.
Make sure that you have enough glassware to cover those guests that repeatedly put their drinks down can’t find them again (and little tags to identify the owners of abandoned stemware!)
Another idea is to have a suitable place to hang up coats, rather than dumping them on the bed in the spare bedroom. A rack that you would otherwise use in the powder room or home office is just the ticket.
We all have our little tips for hosting the most perfectly elegant holiday soirée. What are yours?