There are times when you will want to arrange an elegant dinner to celebrate a special occasion, maybe a milestone birthday or an anniversary. The first step is to find a suitable venue. In most cases you would want to hire the whole restaurant for the evening, so it is worth making sure you confirm the number of attendees so that the restaurant can be sure it will be worth their while.
This type of event is not the same as simply inviting people out for a meal. For a black tie dinner, you might want to have some musical entertainment and waiters handing out drinks on arrival as well as hors d’oeuvres while people are waiting for the meal to be served.
Dress code
Be clear with your guests in advance about the dress code. An elegant dinner requires elegant attire. Party and going out dresses are a must and there are plenty of options when it comes to formal evening wear for women. You could give the dress code a bit of a theme such as a colour. Ask all the ladies to wear shades of red, for example, if it is a Valentine’s day event, or for an anniversary, ask them to wear a shade that matched with your colour scheme for the wedding, all those years ago. Most people are happy to enter into the spirit of this and will love to go shopping for going out dresses that meet the brief.
Plan the menu
For an event you won’t be using the restaurant’s standard menu, but you’ll want to plan the menu in advance. You might want to give people a choice of dishes and have the restaurant take into account any dietary requirements. For an event like this you might want to give a choice of two starters – make them both suitable for vegetarians and this will help to avoid any issues at the start of the meal. The mains should also be a choice of two – one for vegetarians and one for the non-vegetarians. You might want to limit desert – make this a piece of any celebration cake, for example.
Send out the menu in advance and then you can be sure that you’ve given people enough time to let you know if there are any issues. The restaurant will be happy to provide additional dishes to meet specific requirements, such as a gluten-free dish.
