Enjoy a beautiful, delicious and personal Easter Sunday this year!
Keep traditions alive, even in the strangest of times, by hosting an impressive Easter lunch with your loved ones with Easter table decor that will steal the show—perhaps even more than the meal itself. When it comes to Easter decorations, LuxDeco’s VP Sales & Partnerships, Carina knows a thing or two about dressing to impress, from place settings to centrepieces. Read on for five must-dos, straight from the host’s handbook.
I’m all for keeping the table uncovered for most mealtimes. If you have a beautiful dining table, why would you want to cover it up? But for special occasions, it’s fitting to do something that’s out of the ordinary, and that’s why I always start my Easter table with a luxury tablecloth in either pure and simple white or a pretty pastel, like blush pink or apricot.
From here, decide what other tableware textiles you might want to add in. Cloth napkins are an absolute must, but to match or to contrast with your tablecloth? That’s the question. Keep to the same colour for subtlety and then have some fun with napkin rings (or ribbon instead) in a colour that’s repeated either in the glassware or centrepiece so there’s a clear colour palette going on.
For a more formal Easter tablescape, instead of laying the napkin next to the crockery, lay it flat on top of the dinner plate and under the side plate and bowl, and go for cotton rather than laidback linen.
Easter flowers are always appreciated because it’s such a lovely celebration of spring. After Christmas, it’s often the next most popular time of year for families to get together and enjoy a traditional Easter dinner together. This year will be smaller, of course, but the joy of fresh florals can still be enjoyed by the few as much as they are by a crowd and taking the time to adorn the tabletop with fresh flowers is a touch that really marks the occasion.
To do things properly, visit your local florist to get what’s in season or if you’re the green-fingered kind, head into the garden to bring in fresh cuttings such as tulips, hyacinth and ranunculus. You might like to mix in a few scattered posies of the faux flower variety to give you more flower density but with staying power.
I like to mix vases of different heights, from bud vases to bottle-neck vases, and flowers of different scale so you have a nice mix of colour, shape and texture. You could always tuck an individual spring flower, like Lily of the Valley or a single bluebell, into each person’s napkin as an elegant floral flourish.
Ask anybody which colours come to mind for spring and they’re bound to say pastels. Easter is the perfect time to explore sherbet shades of lemon, pale blue and mint green, so run with the sweet theme and unite everything on your Easter tableware checklist with a common colour scheme, from flowers to tinted glass tealight holders.
Everybody needs a premium set of tableware to upgrade what you use on a day-to-day basis. If yours was a wedding gift from way back when that’s in need of modernising or if it’s the most delicate fine bone china that you store away safely as a family heirloom to be cherished rather than used, then it’s time to treat yourself to a new dinnerware collection.
Easter tableware deserves to be that bit more luxurious to mark the occasion so decide whether you want a true classic from timeless brands like Wedgwood or a contemporary number from the likes of Vista Alegre.
Dinner plates and bowls aren’t the only point of consideration. What are you going to serve your British lamb and all the trimmings on and from what will you pour a glass of something fizzy? Serving platters, carafes and everything in between are all up for discussion, especially because they can be brought out year after year when entertaining guests becomes the norm again.
Think of it as an Easter gift to yourself!
Setting the scene is, of course, of huge importance, but nobody is denying that your Easter menu has got to be of the same exquisite taste as the surroundings it’s served in.
Any wise chef knows that to serve a never-before-sampled menu at a special occasion is a high risk move, but this isn't an Easter where you need to worry about that! You can really cook whatever you want so long as you and yours love it.
That said, you might want to ensure your menu complements the setting you’ve carefully curated—no need to throw decorum out the window completely. If you've planned for the traditional Easter dinner aesthetic, then you might want to keep your Easter menu just as classic with devilled eggs for canapés, lamb, new potatoes and fresh mint and dressed asparagus for the main, followed by Simnel Cake for pudding. But if you’ve taken Easter down a different route (this is the year to do it after all) which offers a modern twist on tradition, let your menu follow suit. Instead of Easter lunch, why not have an Easter brunch or Easter afternoon tea complete with homemade marmalade hot cross buns, cinnamon buns, open rye bread sandwiches (Scandi-style) and mimosas? This is an Easter to go as extravagant or as simple as you'd like because, as the joyful Tabitha Brown would say, that's your business.
Happy hosting!
