Dinner Party Checklist (2 Weeks, 12 Steps)
Twelve steps to host a dinner for six without cooking all evening, from choosing the menu to chilling the wine, in the order the kitchen imposes.
Hosting a dinner goes wrong in the last ninety minutes, not in the planning. One person cannot plate a starter, watch a main and greet guests at the same time, so the whole point of the plan is to move work off the evening itself. These twelve steps put each decision where it costs the least.
- D-10
1.Menu
Build the menu around one dish that needs your attention and two that do not. A braise, a roast or anything that finishes in the oven leaves you free; three pan-cooked courses means you spend the evening with your back to the room. Decide now whether the main is served on plates or on the table, because that changes how much last-minute work exists.
- D-10
2.Invitations
Ask about allergies and what people do not eat in the invitation itself, not on the night. Give an arrival time and say when you plan to sit down — an hour of aperitif is plenty, and a guest who thinks dinner is at 20:00 will not enjoy waiting until 22:00.
- D-5
3.Shopping list
Write the list by shop and not by course, then flag the two or three items you cannot substitute. Anything you order or reserve — a specific cut of meat, a fish, a cheese from a counter — has to be requested at this point, not found on the shelf later.
- D-3
4.Ingredients
Buy everything except fresh fish, salad and bread now. Two days of margin is what lets a missing ingredient become a second trip instead of a rewritten menu.
- D-3
5.Wines & drinks
Count roughly half a bottle of wine per drinking guest, plus one spare, and buy something non-alcoholic that is not just water. Buying now rather than on the day matters for red: a bottle bought warm and opened an hour later shows it.
- D-1
6.Prep desserts ahead
Desserts are the only course that is usually better made the day before — mousses, tarts, panna cotta, anything that sets. Making it now is what removes the dessert from the evening entirely, which is the difference between sitting down with your guests and not.
- D-1
7.Starters
Do the knife work the day before: wash and dry salad, make the dressing separately, cut vegetables, roast what can be reheated. Keep anything that oxidises whole and cut it on the day.
- D-0
8.Set the table
Lay the table in the afternoon, not at 19:45, and eat something while you do it. Count chairs and glasses against the real guest number; a missing chair discovered at the door is a genuine problem, a missing dessert spoon is not.
- D-0
9.Mood (music, candles)
Set the playlist long enough to run three hours without a decision, and put the lights lower than feels right — the room is brighter to you than to someone arriving. Candles on the table should sit below eye level so people can see each other across it.
- D-0
10.Main course
Work backwards from the sit-down time and write down two numbers: when it goes in and when it comes out. Add resting time for meat — twenty minutes for a roast — and remember the oven only does one temperature at a time, so anything else needing the oven has to fit around it.
- D-1
11.Tableware
Check the day before that you own enough matching plates for the number of courses, and wash whatever has been in a cupboard since last time. If you are short, borrow the day before rather than reducing the menu.
- D-1
12.Chill drinks
White wine, champagne and beer need three to four hours in the fridge, so this is a day-before job, not an evening one. A bucket of ice and water chills a bottle in twenty minutes if you forget — the freezer is a last resort and easy to leave in too long.
How to adapt this checklist
The twelve steps hold for most dinners, but three things move them.
Guest count. Up to six, one oven and four plates of each kind are enough and steps 10 and 11 are trivial. From eight up, the constraint stops being cooking and becomes serving: plates go cold while you fill them, so step 1 should choose a main served from a dish on the table, and step 11 becomes a real check rather than a formality.
Whether you cook alone. With a second pair of hands, steps 7 and 10 can overlap. Alone, they cannot — which is why step 6 exists. Every course you move to the day before buys back a quarter of an hour on the night.
The kitchen you have. One oven means the main and anything gratinéed compete for it. Decide that conflict at step 1, not at step 10, and let one of the two be served at room temperature.
The steps people underestimate
Step 6, the desserts. Made on the day, dessert lands exactly when you are least able to deal with it. Made the day before, it costs nothing.
Step 10, the main course timing. Not the cooking — the two written times. Almost every late dinner comes from an oven that went on at the hour guests arrived rather than an hour before.
Step 12, chilling the drinks. It is remembered at 19:00 for a 20:00 dinner, and by then it is too late to fix properly.
DraftLine turns these 12 steps into dated tasks counted back from your dinner, including the ones that land the day before.
Create my checklist (12 tasks)Free, no account needed. Nothing is saved until you confirm.