Summer Supper

One personality trait I can always trust my city of Greenville to flaunt: the persistence of collaboration over competition. I do, without doubt, think this very idea is woven into the threads of our lil (but getting way bigger) city. Its a quality I find myself as creative craving: the hunger to learn from others, who are still learning themselves, and the interest in making each other better. This is why creatives have such a solid root in our Greenville soil, this is why we come in numbers and packs. Being ourselves here, is just easy. And when we get together, it's big rewarding things. Southern Living kind of things. I'm just so grateful to live and grow here, ya mean?

Around this time last year, my gal Marquin came to me with the idea of curating a creative-inspired Summer Supper, an evening where we could all put our right-brained noggins together and celebrate the many talents in our community. Each Guest was tasked with their talent. As such, I was responsible for decor and aesthetics. From the very get go, we decided to use what we had in an effort of keeping costs low and steering clear of renting or buying a lot.

Without fail, I choose to head toward the land of tried and true citrus when asked to pick a loose theme. It's so shocking, right? But alas, I couldn't ask to be more myself than have the opportunity to introduce my favorite fruitful vibes with all of the blue and white china in between. With that decided, it felt right to go bottoms up on Lemonade Sangria . 

For the tablescape, I chose to mix two sets of dining room chairs for seating. On the table top, it felt best to ground our design with the base of a simple white table cloth. Then, we had three runners made of inexpensive fabric run down the table- you know we dig a good graphic stripe effect. Flanked by a mix of blue and white salad plates, our simple white dinner plate anchored each place setting. I liked that this created some continuity while also adding interest to each individual setting. Clean white can be the belle of the dang ball. When in doubt, white napkins out. That's my mantra. Sprinkle this tabletop with Rewined glassware and you've got yourself a casual, elegant shindig. 

Individual cutting boards were used as bread plates but also worked as a unique place to showcase our menu and place cards. We wanted our guests to go home with something to remember, thus we also used these as our parting favors. See how I'm going back to our whole use what you have theme?

Last but certainly not least, we worked with Kate Asire to make them floral dreams come way true. Kate did her thang to the fullest using just a couple of impactful arrangements all while supplementing with simple bowls of fruit to accent without distracting. This helped keep our expenses low while following a rule all dinner parties should abide by: spend where it counts.  Spring is the season of showers and oh-so-many parties so here's to happy hosting!

All photos by Kimberly Mitchell Gibson Photography

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