What kind of colour scheme are you going for on your Christmas table?

[Swisskit]

I don't usually bother with this sort of thing, but I do like the Christmas table to look nice.

I fancy a sort of "white with pine sprigs and pine cones", but can't seem to find exactly what I'm looking for. So basically white, dark green, natural brown. Does this sound horrible? Should I just go with bright red and white, with a sort of Scandi look? Or dark red and gold? Or navy?

Please tell me about your plans ..

Yabley? Wtf is a yabley???

I've got a silver tablecloth with stags on, a silver bowl with stags heads to go in the middle full of red and silver baubles. Silver charger plates. And a tartan runner and tartan napkins!

What do you all do with the centre pieces/stags heads/bowls of baubles when the food is served? My table (large one seating 8 adults) is so crammed with food that there isn't any room for stuff like that. My theme is food.

Same here, we have charger plates, the nicest glasses and cutlery and that's it. The table is heaving with food! I once tried to leave a single candle on the table, which set fire to someone's sleeve.

We have to remove the candles before putting the serving dishes on the table, otherwise there isn't space, they are just to make it look nice when its laid (kitchen table so its in full view beforehand). Also decorations get in the way when people are helping themselves/each other to food. I can see that it might be easier from this point of view if you plate up, but we prefer serving dishes on the table.

Sorry I should have said our colour scheme is gold and silver which looks nice on the table which is quite dark wood (no cloth as it doesn't suit the room). So chargers are gold, cutlery is silver and we use some of my grandma's old serving bowls for sauces and extras, which have a gold rim.

I'm going with a dark red and dull gold cloth, with dark red runner. White plates, gold crackers, dark red linen napkins.

Our room has a huge fireplace and lots of beams as it's very old, so anything modern looks wrong.