Chasing “Perfect” Is Pointless
There’s nothing more stressful — or more pointless — than chasing the idea of the perfect dinner party. Real dinner parties aren’t magazine spreads. They’re memories. They’re better with a little chaos and a lot of heart.
My First Dinner Party
I was in my late 30s, finally in an apartment with no roommates. Just me. I wanted to feel grown up — the kind of adult who could host, cook, and make it look easy.
I didn’t have much furniture or a dining set, but I had a playlist (thanks to the golden age of MP3s) because even then I knew music tells its own story behind the conversations.
The plates and silverware were a thrift-store mix I’d curated before thrift-store shopping was cool. Nothing matched — not the plates, not the glassware, not the forks and knives. I was embarrassed, a little. But proud too.
The Menu Was Ambitious, the Dessert a Disaster
I cooked my family’s chicken fricasé with glazed carrots, iced tea, and tomato bruschetta I’d pulled from the pages of Cooking Light. Dessert was ambitious — dried meringue with fresh fruit on top. But I didn’t check them soon enough, and they slumped into gooey blocks on the plate. To save them, I piled on more meringue and tucked in extra fruit, hoping it would look intentional.
And the seating? I had only three chairs. The fourth was a box of books — until halfway through dinner when it collapsed. My friend slid straight to the floor, books everywhere. We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.
So we moved the whole thing — food, drinks, laughter — to the floor by the window. We cranked up Yellow by Coldplay on my boombox and finished that gloopy sherbet sitting cross-legged.
Why Imperfect Wins Every Time
It was the best dinner party I ever threw.
And the truth is, most of my favorite dinners since then have been just as imperfect: mismatched plates, a missing dish, the playlist skipping. But always full of the good stuff — laughter, music, conversation.
Perfect food never saved a party. Laughter, warmth, and a table (or even the floor) that feels like home always do.
So let the meringue collapse. Let the plates be mismatched. If the books give way, all the better.
