Design, styling, and photography by Mary Madore-Hickey | MERZE Lifestyle

The formal dinner party is back. Here is how to set a table worth lingering over, and why I refuse to save the good things for a someday that never comes.

The dinner party is coming back. The real kind, in a real dining room, with candles and cloth napkins and the good glasses, people sitting for hours because no one wants to leave. I have watched the formal dining room return over the last year or two, and I will admit I feel a little vindicated, because I never stopped setting tables this way in the first place.

But let me be clear about what is coming back, because it is not the version most of us dreaded growing up.

The New Formal Isn't Stuffy

The formal table coming back is not the stiff, untouchable kind. My mother had a room you couldn't touch and china you couldn't use. Everything saved. Everything behind glass. It felt like the beauty was being kept from us rather than shared.

That is not what is returning, thank goodness. The formality coming back is warm. It's the decision to make every day feel like it matters. It's lighting candles when there's no occasion at all. It's using the good china tonight instead of saving it for the day that somehow never makes it onto the calendar.

That's the whole idea, and it fits in four words. Use the good china.

The Old Pieces Are What Make It Work

When people ask how to set a formal table with vintage pieces, this is the part they miss. A table of all-new, all-matched, all-perfect pieces looks expensive and says nothing. It's the old things, the vintage and the antique, that give a table its soul.

I learned this by setting the tables you'll see below. I'd get everything placed, step back, and something would feel flat. Then I'd bring in the antique silver, the vintage crystal, the plate that came down through the family, and the whole thing would come alive. Every single time, it was the old pieces that did it. Not the new ones. Not the money. The heirlooms.

Take them away, and you have a set table. Leave them in, and you have a table that means something. I don't know how else to say it.

A Closer Look at How I Layered These Tables

Let me walk you through three of my own tables, because the pieces tell the story better than I can in the abstract. Each one mixes old and new, and each one leans on a few beautiful vintage pieces to carry it.

An Elegant Thanksgiving Table, Layered with Vintage

Here is how I set an elegant Thanksgiving table with vintage pieces. The centerpiece is a soup tureen more than a hundred years old. It has come down through at least three generations of my family, and I used it here to pull the colors across the whole table.

I'll be honest about the woven placemat at each seat. On its own, it's a little clumsy, very brown, almost too rustic for what I wanted. But I loved it and was going to use it, so I built the rest of the table to keep it in place. Just drabs of brown and burgundy, enough to echo the mat and no more, so the table wouldn't tip over into country. Then I brought in a soft green French linen cloth and embroidered napkins to lift it back up to elegance. That's really the whole trick: let the humble piece stay, and design around it until it behaves.

The settings stack up from a woven charger, to a mid-century white plate, to a modern berry-edged plate on top for a little texture. The napkin is embroidered with evergreen and acorns to keep it on theme. The sterling flatware was a wedding gift from my in-laws. The crystal is deliberately mismatched, an etched glass I carry in the boutique next to a vintage Waterford I use for water. Vintage Waterford candlesticks over all of it. And the flowers gave it the pop I was after, colors picked to move your eye around the table. To read more about this table design, just click the link.

A Vintage Blue and White China Table Setting

This vintage blue-and-white china table setting began with a lucky find. These are the plates that won my table at Set to Celebrate, and I found them at an antique shop for next to nothing.

Look closely, and none of them match. Different patterns, and the edges aren't quite round; they have this very slight scallop. That's exactly why I bought them. I love blue and white, and I love that the French never fussed about matching. They care how a table feels, not whether every plate agrees. So I let mine disagree.

They sit on a Juliska berry charger, with a genuine Spode bread plate I picked up more recently, old and new in the same pattern family. Underneath, I stacked two antique tablecloths, a white one, then the faintest yellow above it. The flatware is my everyday Lenox, which just happened to suit the French theme, which is the whole point: use what you have and love it. The crystal is mixed again, my boutique-etched glass beside a Williams-Sonoma one I bought years ago. Cream roses in a gold vase at the center.

I still use these plates constantly, formal nights and casual ones both, because I love them. What a find. That's the point I keep coming back to. The beautiful things are not for someday. Read my journal for more on this table.

Mixing Vintage and Modern China, Beautifully

This last setting is all about mixing vintage and modern china, gold and pink, and a little romance. A gold charger at the base, a modern pink-and-gold plate, then a Limoges-style salad plate on top. From there, I added the linen napkin that I carry in my boutique. It did exactly what I wanted at the time. It elevated the design just a little more.

The gold-etched glass I carry in the boutique. The other glass I found at Williams Sonoma a few years back. And the gold flatware, which still makes me smile, was my mother's. Vintage flatware like hers is having a real moment right now, and I love that something she used for years is suddenly the thing everyone wants again, and it's right here on my table. To read more about this table design, just click on this link.

Set It Now, Not Someday

I'll keep saying this because I believe it more than almost anything I know about a home. The beautiful things are meant to be used.

The crystal your mother saved. The china you tucked away. The silver that only comes out at holidays. Take it out. Use it tonight. A beautiful table isn't the reward for a good enough occasion. It's the thing that makes the occasion.

The dinner party is coming back because we're remembering something we shouldn't have forgotten. That gathering matters. That a table set with care is a kind of love. That the good china was never meant to sit in the dark.

So use it. There is no occasion more worthy than the people already at your table.

Design with the Heart™

À bientôt,

Mary