Happy Halloween! We celebrated this holiday with a SPOOKY, sophisticated soirée for twelve. We love the juxtaposition of silly costumes with a formal dinner party that is full of drama, modern elegance and fright! Our menu was spooky but flavorful with more TREATS than TRICKS. We are excited to share our horror d’oeuvres, menacing mains and sinfully delicious desserts with you. Bone Appetit!
Wicked Table
For our elegant tablescape, we focused on a simple black and ivory color palette with splashes of orange. We incorporated Williams Sonoma’s Macbeth inspired dinnerware. We love the vintage images of Hemlock Root, Toe of Frog, Witch’s Brew and Wool of Bat on the plates, platters and napkins. We added some whimsy to the table with Bed Bath and Beyond’s bat shaped table mats and hurricanes filled with candy corn. Inga of International Garden created our beautiful floral arrangements with orange roses, black calla lilies and eucalyptus. For formal dinner parties, we use place cards to assign seating. Kanchana added some eeriness to the place settings by writing guest’s names on OMINOUS tombstones and placing them in spiderweb place card holders.
Spooktacular Menu
We believe a Halloween menu should be so much more than a bucket of candy! For our dinner party, we asked our guests to prepare a delectable bite that is not only inspired by Halloween but also sophisticated for adult palates.
Drink or Treat
During the cocktail hour, guests gathered around the bar to enjoy devilish drinks and horror d’oeuvres. We served SCARY quesadillas with Bloody Tomato Salsa and Ghoul-a-mole. These are incredibly easy to make with Halloween cookie cutters and our guests LOVED them. The Bat Bites were visually adorable and tasted delicious. Hazardous Hummus and a trio of Evil Eggplants completed our horror d’oeuvres. Tricks and treats aside, we believe every spooktacular party should have a signature libation. Our creepy cocktail this year was a Blood Orange potion. We garnished the glasses with broken bones and broomsticks. We also dressed our wine in costume with adorable bottle toppers from Pottery Barn!
Trick or Eat
After cocktail hour, we enjoyed a seated dinner for 12. We feasted on Spooky Squash Soup, Jack-o-Lantern Curry over Black Rice, Creepy Casserole and Broken Lamb Ribs.
We adorned the dessert table with a whimsical Halloween banner from Williams Sonoma, a tassel garland, orange roses and black calla lilies. This year’s sinister sweets included candy corn mousse, rotten apple crisp and boo-tiful brownies. To make the brownies boo-tiful, we decorated them with white chocolate skeleton bones and chocolate tombstones. Halloween dessert bars must include some chocolate candy! We had some treat boxes for guests to take home some of the Halloween goodies.
After dinner, more friends joined us for drinks and games. We played pool and Heads-Up. Guests even used our decorative tombstone and skeleton as photo props. We also asked each guest to sign our chalkboard tombstone to commemorate our dinner party.
We had a fabulous evening filled with delicious bites, fabulous costumes and excellent conversation.
xoxo Archana & Kanchana
“Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story.”––Mason Cooley
I love how you organized your Halloween party. It looks so spooky and creative. It looks fun too!
So much fun. We don’t really celebrate halloween here but it is such a fun day to decorate for, right!
What a wonderful way to have a Halloween Party. Love the menu and decorations.
I’m not that much into Halloween, but your menu sounds super-fun! You’re really very organized – I’m sure all your events are turning out just perfect, am I right?
Wow, this is a cool Halloween party! It is awesome that they are all dressed up as well. Great party!
I did not realize that Halloween is just around the corner and I haven’t really prepared anything yet. Thank you for all these tips. Love the idea of a wicked table and would like to make a similar one.
I wish I had friends to do this with. LOL, We spent the last 2 weekends putting up our Halloween decorations outside. My fiance is BIIIIGGG on Halloween. This is the first year I am excited because I am making my Halloween costume this year.
So much fun. It’s almost Halloween and time for trick and treats. I love the movies and spooky decorations.
Fransic