Fancy table settings

[StephMK]

Do you have "fancy" dinnerware-china, crystal, silver? Do you have tablecloths, placemats, etc. and do you use all of it? If so, how often?

This came up because we never use our wedding crystal glasses and my married DD24 doesn't want them either. She did not register for anything formal.

I use our china and silver a few times a year at holidays and they are pretty simple. I have about 5 tablecloths, 3 are casual every day that I rotate by seasonal colors. The dining room is used as the main eating space whenever we sit down to eat together.

Just wondering if that is a generational thing going away or if we just live really casually. My grandmother used to set a formal Sunday dinner every week but I don't know anyone who does that now. I love looking at pretty table settings and decorations though.

 

[mumto3girls]

I think it is something most people just don’t have the time to bother with anymore. I know many people who don’t have any and many who have some but don’t use it. My husband and I own a building that we lease to an “antique mall” that has various dealers. China and glassware is something that they all say doesn’t sell with a few exceptions.

That said though, I really enjoy a pretty table, particularly dishes. I eloped so didn’t have wedding china or silver, but over the years have had various pieces passed down to me. I sometimes frequent estate sales/yard sales and sometimes will pick up matching pieces to things I already have when the price is right. I did, over a period of several years, buy and was gifted some Christmas dishes from Target that I love. I get those out around Thanksgiving and use them daily through New Years. The other things I use on special occasions—Easter, Mother’s Day etc.

I don’t care much about silver. I always use my everyday pieces. I think the pattern is nice and it doesn’t need polished so i’ve never bought any silver.

I have a few tablecloths—green ones I use for fall/winter holidays and white for the rest of the year.

My daughters are 11, 14 and 18. They don’t seem interested in any of it except the Target Christmas dishes. They still get excited when those come out and say it signals the start of the season for them.

 

[Meriweather]

I have my mother's china.....love them. Dogwood pattern in pink and gray. My uncle brought them back from Japan for her during WWII.
I love them.
We use them a couple times a year.....Easter brunch and usually NY Day. I don't do Thanksgiving anymore so don't use them then. But I see them everyday.
My silver was my aunt's. Daffodil pattern.

Lots of table clothes. Everyday ones and ones for the holiday. We eat in the dining room on holiday, but also every Wednesday for family dinner night. That is the table that everyone can sit out. My kitchen table only seats 4.
Place mats on kitchen table always and also on kitchen bar. Change by season.

 

[barkley]

i have only used my china maybe once in the past 10 years. i used to do it up for holidays but due to the bulk of family passing it's just the 4 of us so we got out of the habit.

i don't know that either of my kids will want it and i've got A TON b/c when i was newly married a co-worker commented about how she had increased her settings over the years so that each of her 2 kids wouldn't have to decide who got it down the line. well.....at one point (after having 2 kids) we moved near a china outlet and while macy's had the lock on my pattern and no one could legally sell it within something like a 100 mile radius of a macy's (and we had lots of macy's back then) the outlet had a sister store in the middle of nowhere that carried the pattern so i would arrange orders at the other location to pickup at my location. then when my pattern was discontinued and my location started clearing out all the stuff like serving bowls, the coffee pot, platters....suffice it to say that we could do a sit down meal for 16-20 people and still have untouched ware.

 

[gotomu212]

We use our china as every day dishes unless we’re microwaving something. My mother thinks we’re crazy to eat pizza and hamburgers off china and let our kids use them, but it makes no sense to me to have thousands of dollars of dishes sit in a cabinet for 360 days a year. We have placemats we keep on the table, but don’t use table clothes.

I did get rid of our silver place settings though. They were just too much of a pain to care for.

 

[EscalatorKid]

My whole life, my family has used the Corelleware my mom bought when they married in 1978. There's a set of white plates and a set of Butterfly Gold print plates. For Christmas, we had some holly-leaf stemware that came from Arby's or something like that. We have mismatched serving bowls for larger gatherings.

I can't remember anyone in my family using fine china ever in my lifetime. Corelle suited us just fine.

My great grandmother was known to ask people who "cared" about a disorganized or mismatched house: "Did you come to see me or did you come to see the house?"

My thoughts are that I'm fine with using every day dinner plates for special occasions. The family/friends, the food, and the conversation are the highlight; not my ugly dishes.

 

[TipsyTraveler]

I’m another who uses china as everyday dishware. It’s not heirloom or anything, just something I bought because I liked it. I don’t use placemats and have only on very rare occasion used a tablecloth — they’re just not my style. I don’t own silver and likely never will, as that requires more upkeep than I’m interested in doing.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

My mother had a set of china and silverware that I think is down her cellar somewhere. She didn't have room for it in her in law apt. She also still uses her Corellewear from the 70s in Butterfly Gold. We also use Corellewear for everyday use, in black and white (which replaced a green and peach hearts set we had originally).

I have never had an interest in china, to be honest. Or house does not have a formal dining room. Someone gifted us a Pfaltzgraft set for our wedding, and I did use it for special occasions, but I had to store it in a storage room downstairs and I always felt I had to wash it all before use and that got to be a pain since it was a lot of extra work, so I stopped using it.

When we remodeled our kitchen I saved one large cabinet for special occasion dishes, but I wound up going with the all white ones from Crate and Barrel, as well as some black serving dishes, which works well with the style of our house and our color scheme. I keep some tablecloths, but my favorite, which my MIL made me, got ruined, so now I just buy some cheap ones that suit the occasion. But even these white plates don't get too much use lately - sometimes I just buy paper plates if we're eating outside (which is often) or when life is busy and I need to save time on clean up (which is often), and sometimes, if it's just informal and friends are over for dinner, we stick with using our Corellewear (which in itself is pretty nice).

I agree with a pp, seeing people and having a nice, relaxing time is more important to me than the dishware or what the house looks like. I enjoy seeing a formal setting (who doesn't?), but these days it doesn't seem to always mesh with peoples' lives.

 

[barkley]

Someone gifted us a Pfaltzgraft set for our wedding,

we had one of their outlets near us at our prior home and i was thrilled when they were clearing out some of their commercial client items. i have a dozen white oval plates that they supplied to mexican restaurants and a handful of white united airline sandwich trays. these are the most durable items, and unlike allot of the pfaltzgraff pieces that are marketed to the public the don't have the tendency to get the gray lines from utensil use.

 

[shoney]

I got China with serving pieces and stemware for my shower 25 years ago. Service for 16!!!
I opened 6 place settings to display in our first home.
Doesn’t match our new home so no more displaying and never even opened the other boxes

I would never encourage anyone to get formal dinnerware. It’s just not something that is needed. When we want a formal dinner we got out to eat!!!

 

[lorimay]

I never received any of that when I was married 31 years ago.
But when my husbands parents passed away we brought theres home.
Its beautiful and dainty, I have never used it. I asked my daughter if she wanted it and she said no, so its in a cabinet for now.

I am a Corelle girl like my mom. But I will be honest we use a lot of paper plates around here.
Even for the holidays, its just easier.
I do use placemats on my kitchen and dining room tables.

 

[indimom]

I have two sets of china, the set my mother bought for me before I married, and my paternal grandmother's. One is more spring looking (silver and pale blues), the other is more fall colored (browns touches of teal). I rotate them in the hutch to display the set that suits the season. And I pull them out for Easter or Christmas occasionally. But, that's about it. I have standard white (cheap) china for day to day use. I won't get rid of either set, but they really aren't used.

 

[SC Minnie]

We got a set of casual china and a set of formal china when we married 26 years ago. We still use the casual china. We've used the formal china maybe 5 times. It's displayed in a china hutch in our formal dining room. I still love the pattern. I do have a lot of table cloths but can't remember the last time I used one. We don't do big family gatherings anymore.

I also have a large set of Spode Christmas dishes, serving pieces too. I haven't used those in a few years either. I think I'm going to make a point of using them this year.

I still use the casual flatware we got as wedding gifts. We also got formal flatware too and it's also in the china hutch with the formal stemware.

 

[lsyorke]

DS(30) has a composter on their wedding registry, LOL! Nope, no dishes or glassware.

 

[antmaril]

My wedding china (I was married in 1974) is in boxes in my basement. I haven’t used it in many, many years.

 

[luvsJack]

I have my grandmothers china and have never used it. It’s in a high cabinet that I can’t even get to easily.

We have never had a table big enough for all us except when the kids were young but we plan to do some redecorating and my bil has promised to build me a large dining table. So will be looking at at some nice sets. Not china or formal, just not the mixed set of what’s left from the last 3 sets that we have now lol.

I think I would like to set the table nicely for family gatherings but I can hear Dd and dil now “uhmm, no Mom! These paper plates look just fine”. I think that may be how dsis and I did with Mom and her china that cannot be put in the dishwasher.

 

[ronandannette]

My whole life, my family has used the Corelleware my mom bought when they married in 1978. There's a set of white plates and a set of Butterfly Gold print plates. For Christmas, we had some holly-leaf stemware that came from Arby's or something like that. We have mismatched serving bowls for larger gatherings.

I can't remember anyone in my family using fine china ever in my lifetime. Corelle suited us just fine.

My great grandmother was known to ask people who "cared" about a disorganized or mismatched house: "Did you come to see me or did you come to see the house?"

My thoughts are that I'm fine with using every day dinner plates for special occasions. The family/friends, the food, and the conversation are the highlight; not my ugly dishes.

I have all kinds of china, crystal and”good” dishes and stemware but I love nothing more than those 8 Arby’s Christmas goblets I obsessively collected 30’ish years ago! They’re on every holiday table I set.

I’m another who uses china as everyday dishware. It’s not heirloom or anything, just something I bought because I liked it. I don’t use placemats and have only on very rare occasion used a tablecloth — they’re just not my style. I don’t own silver and likely never will, as that requires more upkeep than I’m interested in doing.

My DGrandma was a pioneer wife who homestead in rural northern Alberta. Her life was hardship like you only read about in books. But somehow, inexplicably, the only tableware she owned was 16 full place-settings of Royal Albert American Beauty, including every accessory piece imaginable.

She used those dishes every day, for every meal, including carrying them out to the fields to feed the men at lunch and sending them all over the place when she made food for others. She raised 3 rowdy sons and a gaggle of grandkids on them. As a tiny kid I can remember “racing” my cousins to see who could empty their bowls of whatever and get to the roses first! AFAIK, very few pieces were ever lost or broken. Oddly, the entire set went to one of my boy cousins when she passed away.

I wish for all the world I would have recognized how extraordinary that was and had asked her about where they came from and why she had such a thing. I would love to know the story now.

 

[Lilacs4Me]

My Dad just moved from his house of almost 40 years and my sister took the china he and my mom got for their wedding. I would have loved to have it, but I already have a set that stays in storage because I don't have anywhere to put it. Some of my sisters already have their own China like I do, and one sister wasn't interested. I'm glad *someone* took it...it's a beautiful set!

I started a tradition when they kids were little that just the 5 of us have a special formal dinner on Christmas Eve, and we use the china, cloth napkins and tabelcloth, good silverware, wine glasses, and centerpiece/candlelight. We "dress up", which honestly through their tween/teen years sometimes just means the best I can get them to do is put on a collar shirt on the boys and a dress over DD's jeans and we snap a picture with them sitting so we don't see the PJ bottoms lol but the point is, it is special and the kids love the tradition. One year, just after we moved, I couldn't find the boxes with the china so I used pretty paper holiday plates and you would have thought I cut their arms off they were so upset! haha

Other than that, I very rarely, if ever, use any of it.

 

[cabanafrau]

I use the "good stuff" for holidays and some dinner parties. It was a lot of work at our previous house because I didn't have a formal dining room and I had to store all the formal stuff down in the basement. Living in a home with a formal dining room, a table that expands to seat a dozen, a breakfront, a buffet and a server to store all the formal pieces and linens means it's not a major chore just to use the formal stuff. I do not have silver and would never want to keep up with it.

 

[scrapquitler]

Don't use, never even had the stuff. Well, when we got married I registered for Pfaltzgraff dishes instead of china because I was being practical. 28 years later, and they are still our every day dishes (I originally had like 16 settings, now we are down to 8 pieces of most of the dishes, and only 4 of the cereal bowls). When I registered, I got decent flatware, but not silverware, and we still have some of that. I did get some crystal pieces, and we used them once in a while but not often, when we moved 20 years ago, I donated most of them to Goodwill because of space issues.

I have some table cloths and I like them, but I almost never use them anymore because the cats drag them off the table when I do use them. I generally set the table the morning of a holiday with the table cloth and take it off immediately after dinner - meaning 3 meals a year, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.