"How you welcome and entertain your guests depends on who you’re inviting,” says the bridal and entertaining expert for Lenox Brands. “You have to know your guests and what type of entertaining will make them most comfortable.”

"Eternal Solitaire"	"Grand Central"

Make Your Guests Feel Special
“Make your guests feel special right from the start. For example — instead of a phone call, ‘Hey, want to come over and hang out Friday night?’ — send them a real invitation in the mail.

“Make it seem really special to be invited to your home, by showing your guests you think enough of them to put it on paper. That shows how much you want them at the special occasion, whatever it might be. Your invitation doesn’t have to be formal, a simple note will do. Consider buying some pre-made invitations so you are prepared when you need them.”

She also suggests focusing on the individual needs of your guests. “Does anyone have any particular allergies? Make sure you avoid those foods, or offer substitute dishes. Make sure you introduce guests who may not know everyone else.

“You can’t go wrong if you take the time to invite your guests properly, introduce people, and make them feel comfortable.”

Express Your Style In Your Theme
To present your style as a couple, Denise suggests asking yourselves, ‘What makes this event special to us and shows our bond to each other?’

"Petals and Pearls"	"Provencal Flatware"

“Is it presenting foods the two of you have in common? Or maybe you’ve gone on a special vacation together and you’ve pulled recipes from cookbooks that remind you of your trip. Or you might have learned some recipes together that become your signature recipes as a couple.”

In coordinating flowers, music, and other elements to create an atmosphere that makes your guests feel special, Lenox encourages you to choose what’s in season. “Don’t try to find daffodils in September. If you go with what’s in season, things are going to look more fresh and alive.

“Also, take your guests’ musical tastes into consideration. If you’re having a family gathering, choose music that reflects your history together, music you and your sisters used to play, or music your parents played when they entertained. That helps create an emotional connection to experiences in your past.”

If you’re serving a special meal that reminds you of a trip to the islands, for example, “augment the mood with flowers, music, and a few pictures in the room that help recreate the trip — so you can share the entire experience with your guests.”

These themes can be carried through to your dishes and crystal. Doing an island dish? Use more tropical colors on the linens. Serving a tropical drink? Make sure your glassware is appropriate to what you are serving. Use tall iced beverage glasses and don’t forget the umbrellas!

“Instead of using the complete formal five-piece of dinnerware setting, don’t put out your bread and butter plates, maybe use your dinner and salad plates with bowls for a tropical, chilled soup. It’s easy to coordinate your dinnerware and crystal to make it serve the menu and the mood.”

Streamline Your Entertaining
Most brides have careers, and work long hours. Their question is, "How can I do this as efficiently as possible?"

"Say It With Silk"	"Serenade"

“You probably use a desk planner at work to pull all your projects together,” she continues. “Create your entertaining scenarios the same way. Plan them in advance just as you would for any project and set up a schedule. Keep a record of what you’ve done in the past so you can have reference materials to review.”

That may sound compulsive, but it can make everything easier. “Once you start getting organized, you quickly see the benefits and usually become very organized around your entertaining. Or conversely, you can simply let it go and resign yourself to knowing that any time you entertain, it’s going to be, ‘I’ll pick up the phone and call people with a few hours notice on a Friday night and say, ‘Bring your favorite takeout. I’m turning on the stereo, lighting some candles, and opening a few bottles of wine.’

“It’s very difficult to build a theme and make it as special for your guests if you do it that way, but that doesn’t make it wrong.”

At the same time, if you want to gather a particular mix of people, you seldom can give them such short notice. Their plans may not accommodate your spur of the moment impulses.

“Planning lets you go back and look at the things that did and did not work and make notes about it. ‘Note to self: never serve low-fat sour cream again. Only the real stuff.’ ”

Keeping yourself organized frees you up to have more fun entertaining, letting your guests have more fun as well.

“That applies to your dinnerware and dishes too. Have them organized in one place in your home. Most New Yorkers live in smaller apartments, so have your dinnerware out, close at hand, accessible.

“Know what pieces you have when you’re planning a meal. If you don’t have enough bowls for serving soup, don’t put it on the menu — unless you’re going to be creative and serve it in teacups or mugs, which you can do.

“Having a ‘mental inventory’ of your dinnerware, serving accessories, and crystal is not only good for insurance purposes, but it also helps you entertain, because it’s easier to clarify your menu beforehand when you know what pieces you’re going to use to serve your dishes.

“For example, during lunch or on a work break, you can decide on your menu and your serving accessories, so that when you get home and you’ve got limited time, you already know what you need to pull out of the cabinets and have on the table.”

"British Colonial Metal"	"Tuscan Vine"

Family, Friends, Business Associates
Whoever you are entertaining, make them feel special. “Every time you have family over, make it a special occasion. Whose birthday is coming up? Did someone just graduate? Did one of your nieces or nephews just get an ‘A’ on a math test?

“Find a reason to honor someone, so that every you get together someone recieves special attention.

“Maybe one of your traditions is that everybody at the table says something they are thankful for, like at Thanksgiving, or maybe one special thing that happened during the past month, or something they achieved since the last time you got together.”

Or maybe it’s just a fun question everyone has to answer, or each person has to say one special thing about someone else in the room.

“You could do the same for a get-together with friends. Try to find special things going on in your guest’s lives. If people don’t know each other, mention those things as you introduce them.”

Or play games! “My friend’s family is so much fun. Anytime they get together they always end the evening playing games. Scattegories, Cranium, they have a whole closet full of board games. And her father cheats all the time, but we let him get away with it and it’s just hysterical. The adults drink wine, the kids have ice cream, and the competition is fierce. I think you have to have activites that are just fun for people.”

For business associates, it depends which end of the spectrum you are on. Most often you will be entertaining as a way of thanking them for a job well done.

“It’s nice to recognize all the people in the room. You can say something nice about each person and how they contributed to the project, or find a way to give subtle awards to them.

“Making people feel special goes back to how we treat one another and the respect we afford people in our lives. It’s certainly important in business. And it should be important in entertaining family and friends as well.”

Ideas For Your Wedding
“To translate these ideas from small gatherings to your wedding itself, whatever you do on a small scale can be done on a larger scale as well.

“If many people at your wedding don’t know one another, appoint several ‘ambassadors’ from among your friends. You’ll make people feel special when you tell them, ‘You are a personal ambassador for me. You know this group of people, and my next ambassador knows this other group of people.

“Get your four or five ambassadors together prior to the wedding and say, ‘I’m leaving it up to you to mingle and start introducing people from your social groups to one another.’

“That way you can break the ice among the different groups of people you’ve invited to your wedding. You’re just doing it on a grander scale.

“At a dinner party in your home you make sure you work the room, say hello to each person, and try to introduce everyone personally. You can’t do that at your wedding so appoint people who can. And make them feel special for having that position. Present each of them with a corsage or symbol of their importance to the occasion."

The same goes for menus and decorations. “What is sparking the menu? Is it memories of a special vacation you and your fiancé took together? So pull some of the menu items from that restaurant in Venice, or the favorite restaurant where the two of you met.

“What did the two of you have to eat on your first date? Or do the two of you just both happen to love ‘Chunky Monkey’ ice cream? So make it play a part in your wedding reception, served alongside your wedding cake, maybe even as a small little ice cream stand where you are just serving little ice cream cones as an extra element.”

The touches you extend to people in making them feel comfortable, and in sharing the personal elements of your lives, are very welcoming.

You can use these symbols of your graciousness to almost physically “embrace” your guests, warmly inviting them into your circle — whether in your home, or at your wedding.

800.63.LENOX, www.lenox.com