The Table

Everything about a table is arithmetic before it is taste. A guest needs 70 centimetres of edge to eat a four course dinner without touching a neighbour, and 60 is the point at which people start apologising to each other. Multiply by the number of guests, add the two ends, and you have the length of table you actually need. A dinner for twenty at one table means seven metres of table and a room of at least nine and a half, because the chairs and the service lane are not optional.

What a cover contains

A cover is the space and the equipment for one guest: a charger or a place plate, cutlery for every course set outside in, a bread plate to the upper left, glasses to the upper right, a napkin, a place card and, at a formal dinner, a printed menu. The rule that saves an evening is three pieces of cutlery a side; above that, cutlery is brought with the course, because a place setting that looks like a workshop makes guests anxious.

The centre

The centre run belongs to candles, low flowers and, at a long table, the platters. Nothing in the middle may be higher than 25 centimetres or wider than 30, or your table becomes two tables that cannot see each other. For a long table, plan the centre as a rhythm: candle, low bowl, candle, at roughly one metre intervals, so the light is even from end to end.

Rounds or a long table

A long table is more beautiful and more sociable up to about twenty four guests. Above that, conversation dies at the ends and rounds of eight or ten are better, because every guest has nine neighbours rather than three. For a banquet, mixing one long top table with rounds is the traditional compromise and it works, as long as the rounds are not larger than 180 centimetres.

The table and seating planner does this arithmetic for your room, including the service lane and the linen sizes you will need to hire.