We love to entertain-nothing makes me happier than time to connect with friends and family and to create a beautiful setting that makes the evening feel special. It’s like being in a Nancy Meyers movie and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes, however, the idea of all the work that goes into having people over can feel daunting, right? I want to look around the table and see my nearest and dearest eating beautiful food in the warm glow of candlelight and matching linens, but I definitely don’t have three days to spend getting ready for that moment.

One way that I’ve found to combat that stress is to have a stash of party supplies that can be reused over and over again. Anything that you do on a routine basis gets easier-think about the first time that you made a new recipe versus the tenth time you make it-if you’ve made it before you already know all the supplies that you need, how long it takes to cook, what any potential tricky party might be and how to make them easier. It’s the same with parties! If you have the supplies on hand and use them enough to know what you like, it makes entertaining so much less stressful.

In this series I wanted to share the basic that I use over and over again for parties, starting with two of my favorite parts of any party-flowers and candles! My most used, most foolproof tools for a pretty table: bud vases and votive candles. Bud vases make arranging flowers quick and almost foolproof, especially if you stick with a single color of flower or a single type of flower, which leaves less room for error whether you’re using hydrangeas or sunflowers or a mix of white ranunculus and roses and other delicate white flowers.

Candles are also invaluable for creating a romantic and magical glow for a party. I buy small glass votives and their candles in bulk, but I also love raffia wrapped ones, metallic ones-whatever works with your style. I’ve shared some examples of my tables from various parties below and then a shopping guide to the basics that we use over and over.

The event above was a larger scale event that I got to help with this summer, and we used a professional florist, but to be more economical, we used small bud vases that we bought on Amazon and gave to the florist and asked them to a variety of white flowers. Then we added small votives and taller glass vases that we filled with water and floating candles. All of the supplies were simple and not that expensive but they worked together to create a very elegant look.

Flowers are the easiest way to add impact to a tablescape, and will also make your house smell good and tie everything together. If I’m putting white hydrangeas on the table, I buy extra and also put them on the kitchen counter, the bar, and any little side tables. Even when they are dead simple, they make any space look decorated and pretty. We put these blue hydrangeas into small vases and then put the vases into blue chinoiserie planters that my mom already owned for this table and then added some simple glass votives.

For Easter at my in-laws house, we wanted to do something cute at the last minute, so we took the tulips that Faye had on hand and broke them up into smaller vases that we could arrange down the center of the table and then added some little chicks and Easter grass to fill it out.

For the golf party, we used bud vases with some simple flowers that my mom had growing in her garden. There’s just a stem or two per vase and it only took a few minutes to put together, but it adds such a nice pop of color to the green table.

I’m sharing some links below to vases and votive candle holders that I found on Amazon to help with inspiration. I hope this post was helpful and encourages you to set a pretty table this weekend whether you have guests or not! It’s something that our mom is so good about and I am always aspiring to do better. xo Eloise

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