Ready for Easter Feasting! How to lay the perfect dining table to gather around with your loved ones...

With Easter just around the corner, we absolutely love decorating eggs as a fun and creative family activity.

You may have seen my Christmas table laying blog post previously, now let me show you how I lay my Easter table - complete with our hand-decorated eggs, beautiful Easter flowers and of course, plenty of chocolate. 

Start by laying out your placemats. I absolutely love my placemats from Club Matters - please do check them out for some super-stylish placemats that really do look gorgeous on the dining table.

Coasters next, these go top right of your placemat.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was given a beautiful cutlery set by my Grandparents. Every year they would gift me with a knife, fork and spoon – now, every time I get them out to use and lay each down in place on the table I feel so much joy. The idea of gifting them to me gradually was so very sweet, and I just love using them.

Cutlery for 6

6 big knives

6 big forks

6 pudding spoons

12 little knives - 6 for cheese, and 6 for bread

6 fish knives

6 fish forks

Cutlery Placement

We will be having a starter of prawn and salmon terrine. My children love prawns which is great seeing as my husband Simon is in the fish business!

Placement-wise, you must always work from the outside in.

Therefore, you must start by placing your fish knife and fork for this course on the very outer edge.

Next up is the roast lamb, so we have a large knife and fork. These are each placed one in from the edge.

Then we move to dessert. We shall be thoroughly enjoying a Chamonix Rhubarb Fool with Altitude Gin infused through the rhubarb. so we have a dessert spoon for this placed one more in from the edge.

We finish up with cheese – so a cheese knife goes on the very inner edge on the right.

Pop a little side plate onto the table, with your butter knife on top.

Line all of your cutlery up with the bottom of the placemat and level with each other.

I like to put the napkin on the centre of the placemat as I find it looks really nice and balanced, and for this table, I shall be placing a pretty flower (I used hellebores from the garden since they are still looking so pretty) right in the centre. The napkin can also be placed on the side plate, underneath the butter knife if you wish.

Now for glasses. Water glasses go straight onto the coasters.

Wine glasses - we like to have white with our fish course and red with the main. So carefully place one of each onto the table, with the white closest to you. White glasses are slightly smaller than red so it’s easy to tell them apart.

I’ll be popping a jug of my homemade Elderflower cordial onto the table so the children can enjoy it with a nice chilled bottle of San Pellegrino. 

If you have some (great for bottle drips!), pop two wine coasters onto each end of the table - one for the San Pellegrino and one for a large bottle of red!

Pop a salt and pepper mill set onto each end of the table.

The Decorative Pieces

This year I’ve made some sweet little Spring flower bouquets with flowers from the garden. It’s good practice to not make your arrangements so high that you can’t see over the table, so keep these petite. 

I have got the sweetest Easter Bunny decoration here that I absolutely love - I’d like to keep him out on display all year! He goes right in the middle. 

Scatter around some homemade decorated eggs. I made these eggs recently with my great friend, they make such lovely little keepsakes, and you can see how I blow the egg out ready for decorating here.

Now for the really good stuff…

A big jar of chocolate goodies - I adore Homesense for seasonal decorative items and this Kilner-type jar with its little gold bunny was such a great find. Plus it is filled with chocolate eggs! The children (and I!) will very much be looking forward to tucking into these.

Scatter around some cute Lindt chocolate bugs and you’re done!

I think this is just as a spring table should be, filled with goodies and ready for an Easter feast!

Do you like to decorate your dining table for events? I’d love to hear your ideas below!

Love,