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Everybody loves a dinner party and they are excellent times to get your friends or family together and reconnect or celebrate. A great idea to keep in touch with your friends is to have a dinner party night set up on a regular basis. You can have friends visit your home one-week and you can visit theirs the next. These are great for keeping in touch with your friends as well as celebrate with each other. Dinner parties are also excellent celebrations for birthdays, anniversaries, new babies, and other life events.

Dinner parties can also take on different themes. Murder mystery parties are especially popular with you have enough willing participants. You can also have food style themes such as soup parties for the winter months or Thai dinner parties for an exotic twist. Whichever party you choose you want to be certain that you have an excellent menu and some fine wine.

A simple dinner party with friends is the easiest to plan. If you know your friends well, then it should be relatively simple for you to plan the menu. Invite your friends over for a nice Italian dinner or whatever type of food you choose. Be sure to keep it casual and you may even ask them to bring their favorite wine or wines. You will also want some great dessert planned and perhaps even some fun games for after dinner. These are great and casual parties that allow you to just kick back and enjoy being with friends. Perhaps next week they will invite you over for dinner. These types of parties are also great alternatives to going out to eat, as you get to try different styles of cooking without breaking the bank.

A formal dinner party can also be a lot of fun. Sometimes you just like to dress up and have some fun. The menu should be something special and not something that you all eat on a regular basis, however, the meal should be easy to prepare so that you are not in the kitchen all night and not able to enjoy the company of your friends.

Once you have your style figured out, you will need to begin planning how much time it is going to take to prepare the meal. You want to have plenty of time to conversate with your friends and you want to have time to enjoy the meal yourself. Be sure to plan ample time for cooking, visiting and cleaning. You also need to consider who is coming and if their diet has any restrictions. You may have some friends who are allergic to shellfish, so your Shrimp Scampi might not be the best recipe idea. You may also have friends who are vegetarians, so your New York Strip steaks might not be a great idea either. Be sure to plan plenty of time for grocery shopping and recipe preparation or adjustments.

For a more formal affair, you may choose to print out small menus and invitations to your dinner party. If so, your preparation will need to begin early enough so that you are able to announce the party and ensure that all guests are invited and able to RSVP in time. You may also need to purchase special paper for menus and invitations. You will also want to be sure that your guests are compatible. Do not invite individuals that may not get a long together and be sure to invite those who will be disheartened if you don't invite them. Try to invite people with the same interests so that there will be a good flow of conversation.

Next, you will need to determine how you are going to serve the food. Are you going to allow guests to serve themselves via a buffet in your kitchen or are all dishes going to be sat on the table. For a formal dinner party, you may plan to have all plates prepared and delivered to guests sitting at the table.

Cooking can be stressful. If you are making a new recipe, you may want to make it a week before as a test. If you can make your dessert the night before you will also save a lot of time. Another excellent idea is to prepare cold appetizers and desserts so that they are not taking up precious oven space. If you feel that you are going to be in the kitchen for a while invite your guests to hang out and pitch in the preparation of the meal. You can chat, have a glass of wine and your guests will have a good feeling of being helpful. Besides, people love to watch other people cook.

After the meal be sure to offer mints and a nice liqueur or dessert wine. Coffee is also excellent with dessert and will sort of give finality to the meal. Use this time to ask your friends what they liked and disliked and how you can improve the recipes.