As I learn more and more about the Interior design World, I'm learning that there are so many things under an interior designers umbrella. For one, and becoming an increasing interest of mine, Table Dressing. At my university, there are often lectures and in the last couple of months have noticed how many renown interior design companies often get table dressing requests. Sometimes its a matter of sourcing a certain type of tableware (cutlery, crockery, glassware etc) and other times its creating entire schemes for the dining table of an event, these events including; product launches, annual parties, private dinners and much more. I often ask questions during these school events, held by distinguished designers from New York City, about why people are beginning to turn to interior designers more and more over professional events planners. What you have to remember is that these generally seem to be occasions that are based around a dining event rather than full blown parties or weddings etc, although these do come up now and then. A lot of the time it's that whoever is hosting the event, wants to add a touch to their occasion without feeling like they need to commit to a event planner for a full blown event planning project. It also just comes naturally to us interior designers to want to create a certain mood or look and that also is another reason why hosts turn to us for small jobs like sourcing a particular cutlery set for a family dinner cooked for by a celebrity chef and this cutlery is only available in Russia (yes I made that example up, but it happens and these requests do come up)!

I decided to create a short list of things to consider when going about creating a striking table set up for whatever occasion you are hosting in order to have a layout the works well and emphasis your event, making it a memorable one:

- How many people will be attending?

- Seating Arrangements?

- Name/ Place cards?

- Is the event corporate, public or personal?

-What is appropriate?

- What needs to be emphasized?

- What do you want your guests to go home and remember about the event?

- What look/feel do you want to create?

- Is there a theme?

- Consider the menu to incorporate this into your table decor