Creating a Simple Table Setting When You Have No Time

In this post: Sometimes you want to put an elegant table together, even when you have no time. Here I created a simple table setting for one of those times.⇒

Could you throw an elegant holiday table together in 10 minutes if you had to?

I’m talking 20 guests are coming, you need to cook, you have no time to get fresh flowers, you’re coordinating the transportation schedules of your kids and your life is in a general disarray which is why you’re in this position in the first place.

Yeah, I bet you could do it!

This is pretty much what happened to me last month.

As many of you know, I’d spent weeks getting my parents ready for a move to a nearby apartment. Their health was… let’s call it shaky, at best. I was coordinating hospital trips, apartment renovations, clothing organization, and in home care,  the last bit not expected.

And, in the middle of all this, the Jewish New Year arrived. It’s our holiest holiday of the year. It couldn’t go uncelebrated.

As luck would have it, by now I can pretty much set a table in my sleep. I didn’t have fresh flowers but I wanted to go elegant in honor of the occasion. So I knew there’d be lots of gold.

At times like this, you stick with what’s reliable. So I went with my go-to gilded chargers, ivory textured dinner plates, and floral china salad plates in the American Beauty pattern.

(See resource list below.)

I also knew I had these wonderful velvet pomegranates that I had debuted a few weeks ago, when I promised they would show up again in a table setting soon. You see, pomegranates have a special meaning for the Jewish New Year, as they are rumored to carry the same number of seeds and there are commandments in the bible.

I also had some hydrangeas left over from a previous arrangement that had dried to a lovely color and would have to serve as my flowers. I tucked a few into the centerpiece and held the rest over for glass vases.

For napkins I again went with glimmer in both the napkin and the beaded rings.

Underpinning the whole effort was another old reliable favorite – my washed linen ruffled tablecloth with a worn vintage attitude. Casual meets elegant was my theme of the day.

The one new thing I had purchased in advance were these lovely gold scroll tumblers. They sat nicely with my gold trim goblets and lifted the look of the entire setting.

The brass and crystal candlesticks are vintage and were comfortably put in place. In fact, it felt like everything just knew where to go to help this family pull it together for an important holiday celebration.

If you’re wondering about the food, I was lucky to have my sisters-in-law help out, as well as a local caterer. I did make a few dishes myself and we somehow made it work.

And yes, in the end we were all together and this was the beginning of getting things back on track. Caregivers were secured, my dad’s health improved and the rest… well it is what it is.

(For more on what the means and the story of my parents’ move, you can read THIS POST.)

I set a similar table in the dining room to accommodate the rest of the guests. It felt weird not having fresh flowers or even an organized plan, but when you have a well stocked china cabinet, it’s not too hard to make a simple table setting look elegant.

So, yeah, I’m pretty sure you could do it too!

Simple Table Setting Source List

Click on the items below for direct links to the products. Where actual items were no longer available, I’ve provided similar options. (This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.)

• Golden chargers
• English Country dinner plates
• Floral china salad plates
• First Love flatware
• Gold shimmer napkins
• Amber jeweled napkin rings
• Gold scroll tumblers
• Gold trim wine goblets
• White linen ruffle tablecloth

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