Dinner Parties with a Difference: Top Five Themes for an Unforgettable Meal

Collaborative post with Asda

If you’re a bit of a foodie, or you like to host pleasant evenings where you and your friends can get together to enjoy each other’s company (without the need to include the local boozer!), planning the perfect dinner party could be just your thing. Oozing class and ‘grown-up’ vibes, hosting glitzy dinner parties may not be for everyone, but if you like to dabble in various cuisines and love to make an effort preparing a mouth-watering meal, a dinner party would be a perfect way to showcase your talents.

Think Come Dine with Me, without the cameras, or David Lamb taking the mick out of you when it’s your turn to be on air. Dinner parties are supposed to be fun-filled and enjoyable and while you will undoubtedly be a little stressful during the preparations, if you’re organised enough, once the evening arrives, you can enjoy a glass (or several) or fine wine and enjoy the company that you keep, rather than slaving away over a hot stove.

Make the dinner party even more special with a theme. With a range of women’s fancy dress options available that are less garish and more chic, you could easily incorporate a theme into your evening, which can act as the basis for the underlying vibes throughout the evening. Men and women’s fancy dress doesn’t have to cost a fortune and can be a great way of including everyone, while the option to dress smartly is also a great idea. Take a look at these super themes to help get you into the mood and start planning your next opportunity to be the hostess with the mostess!

• Ethnic – What better way to introduce some exotic flavours and new taste sensations to your friends than with an ethnic evening? Choose from a variety of cuisines, and plan the evening to suit. Décor doesn’t need to be outlandish – simple tributes to the cuisine of choice, such as paper lanterns and bowls of fortune cookies for Chinese, banana leaf placemats for Thai or scatter cushions and tagines for Moroccan would suffice.
• History – Choose a bygone time and use it as a basis for your dinner party. Perhaps the Prohibition Era, complete with flapper dresses, the dawn of the Hippies complete with bell bottoms and psychedelic T’s, or the Roman Empire, giving you the perfect opportunity to dress up in togas and laurel wreath headgear – the choices are endless!
• Black & White – Basing dinner parties around a colour scheme is becoming increasingly popular, and black & white seems to be one of the most used choices. Ask guests to dress in black and white to help the theme stay strong; think monochrome dresses and penguin suits!

Whatever theme you choose to base your dinner party around, it’s better to have one than to have nothing at all. It doesn’t need to be an obvious one either – you could just plan a menu that is based around a certain cuisine, or you could make it into a cocktail evening with signature cocktails with every course. If you do decide to theme it with dress codes as well though, make sure that you invite guests who will play along so that you can all have an unforgettable night!