Candlelight provides a dramatically different feel and tone

Guests delight in being invited to a beautiful, well-thought-out dining experience complete with personal touches. I always begin my tablescapes by “gathering my nuts”, an expression I use throughout my website. One way to create a meaningful tablescape is to make use of your collections. It gets them off the shelves where they just passively sit and onto your table where they actively become a personal design element.

Our favorite is our Lalique collection which is near and dear to my husband ‘s heart, as every piece was a gift from his nursing staff or patients over the years. The delicate nature and reflective properties of these pieces just add a gust of sparkle among a sea of votives candles.

I love a large, high centerpiece that adds drama to a table design. However, the reality is that it doesn’t work when guests are seated as it becomes awkward and next to impossible to converse with guests across the table. No problem! You can easily accomplish the goals of dramatic impact and comfortable engagement by having smaller arrangements scattered around the base of the large centerpiece ready and waiting to take center stage! When guests are seated the large centerpiece is removed and guests are greeted by the sweet smaller ones, with no need to move anything! Here I used my favorite pewter L’Hotel DuMont Paris 1893 trophy urn and filled it with a fern for a punch of greenery to a neutral tablescape. I filled several of our Lalique vases with flowers, varying the style of sweet bouquets ready to take over center stage at showtime! Can you find them?

You can see the two-tiered cake stand (one of my favorites!) on the table which I am showing as another option for a centerpiece change out. Its see-through crystal and glass and shorter height also works. You can use it as a single or double stand on which to perch a smaller bouquet at the top as seen here, or fill it with sweets (a tease for your guests about what’s to come) and set it off to the side as another décor element. By the way, perched in a sea of beautiful Saint Louis crystal stemware, china and Lalique, these two separate cake stands hold their own in beauty and amazing reflective quality throwing bubbles all over the ceiling and the walls when illuminated by candles and lighting. They were each $11.99 from my favorite place for good finds, Home Goods! The joy of designing is endless… the possibilities are infinite.

I enhanced the crystal theme with three of my favorite treasures, a crystal heart, a crystal clam shell with pearl and a sparkling piece of quartz given to me by very special people in my life. They always become a conversation piece sparking conversation about the people who gifted them to me.

The wine selection is an opportunity to add a design element to your table. I love to coordinate a bottle of wine on the table with a label that works into my design or color scheme. We can easily do that today with the thousands of artistically designed labels available. For this tablescape I chose a bottle of Sterling Pinot Grigio with a beautiful sterling colored label which looks beautiful in the sterling colored ice bucket!