Create Holiday Table Decor

Your menu determines what dinnerware to use — for a typical dinner, probably a dinner plate, salad bowl, bread plate and dessert plate. Add a soup bowl and its saucer if you're serving soup.

If you have fine china or holiday dinnerware, this moment is the one they've been waiting for. Even if you don't, you still can add a festive mood to your table decor by adding a jolt of seasonal color to your everyday white dishes with small, inexpensive dishes — such as soup or salad bowls, bread plates or dessert plates — in a solid color that works for more than one holiday.

If you do have holiday-patterned dishes but not enough for every guest, stretch them with whites or solids. For example, at every other setting alternate holiday-patterned dinner plates with a solid white or red dinner plates. Then pair a holiday-patterned salad bowl or bread plate with the solid-colored plate.

Gone are the days when a woman's social status was tied to her grasp of complex protocols for placing oyster forks, bon bon spoons and cheese scoopers (really, those Victorians had too much free time).

All the same, for a holiday dinner, boost the flatware setting beyond the basic fork-spoon-knife by including a piece for each course, such as salad fork, a dessert fork and a butter knife. Add a soup spoon if soup is on the menu and a steak knife if you're serving steak.

Place forks to the left of the plate, in order of use from the outside in. Knives go to the right of the plate, with the first one to be used farthest from the plate. Turn all cutting edges toward the plate. Place any spoons you'll use before dessert, such as a soup spoon, to the right of the knives. Set the butter knife on the bread plate. Place the desert fork and spoon above the dinner plate, parallel to the edge of the table, or bring them in with dessert.

Place flatware about an inch from the edge of the table if you're not using placemats and 2 inches if you are.

Each place setting needs a water glass and a wine glass (serve under-aged guests sparkling cider in their wine glasses). If you're serving white and red wine based on the course, set two wine glasses. Also include coffee cups, set upside down in their saucers until you serve coffee with dessert.

Place the water glass above the dinner knife and the wine glasses to the right of it, in order of use. Don't set the dessert wine glass — bring it in when you serve dessert.

The design of the bowls and plates you use to serve the meal depends on the menu. Covered casserole bowls are handy for everything from green beans to pasta to, well, casseroles, because the lid keeps food warm. Beyond that, you might need the following:

• Salad bowl
• Bread basket
• Meat plate
• Water pitcher
• Soup tureen
• Butter dish
• Gravy boat

Whatever you use, follow the same principles for coordinating solids and patterns that you used for the dinnerware.

Include serving utensils suited to the dish, such as salad servers, slotted spoon for vegetables, vertical tongs for asparagus and green beans, and horizontal tongs for roasted tomatoes and twice-baked potatoes.

When it comes to table decor centerpiece, creativity trumps cost. Here are a few low-cost ideas:

• Fill a pretty glass serving bowl with something seasonal: a pumpkin centerpiece or tiny pumpkins and pine cones for Thanksgiving, round glass ornaments for Christmas, dyed eggs for Easter (just be sure to get the eggs back into the refrigerator ASAP when guests leave).
• Line up a few small potted poinsettias or pots of flowering bulbs in a row.
• Candles are classic, but consider realistic LED ones for safety.
• Wrap different sizes of small empty boxes in holiday wrapping paper, stack them, tie them all together with ribbon and top with a magnificent bow.
• Tempt guests with the promise of dessert by piling a cake plate with chocolate truffles and setting it in the middle of the table (check out our instructions for making perfect truffles).

Whatever you use, your table decor should be low enough for guests to see over or have a tall enough stem that guests can see around it (like a tall thin glass vase filled with glass stones, topped above eye level with a seasonal flower).