host a lavish dinner party

For my 18th i am going to throw a lavish dinner party. like Trimalchio from the roman novel The Satyricon by Petronius, like the Mad Hatter’s tea party and like The Great Gatsby. all of this i hope will be on my uncle’s farm at the end of the year. i think $500 will be enough for it.

I come from a different time when dinner parties were the event to look forward to. I have always wanted to host a ridiculously lavish dinner party (I’m talking 8 guests, 7 courses, the works).

I guess what’s been holding me back is:

1) lack of adequate entertaining space (having lived in 1 BR and studio apartments through college and law school)

2) lack of a full set of dinnerware (I’m very matchy-matchy sometimes), and

3) lack of experience (you have to carefully plan who you’re going to invite so that personalities don’t clash with an event as intimate as a dinner party. also you can’t just through 7 courses together – they should compliment each other).

Some day . . . soon hopefully.