How many dining sets do you have?

[mynameisntlouise]

And how many are in your family? What do you do if you're having people round?

Im buying new dinner sets and I'm thinking 6 or 8. It's £21 difference, is that a small price to pay for having a few spare for any smashed plates over the years?

We're two adults, one 13 year old who stays part of the week and two young children who'll be using children's plates for a while yet.

If its an expensive ish, patterned set I'd buy the larger place set.
I have dinner party plates for 16(large family), an old set of what were the family everyday plates (dwindling) and a generic cheap replacement for daily use.

There are 5 of us and i bought 16 place settings a good while ago. Last time i counted, at Christmas, we were down to nine dinner plates!

There are 8 'sets' in the posh set.
Everyday... Well since we seem to regularly break things, then top up... We have about 6 bowls, 8 dinner plates, 8 side plates and 6 pasta dishes.
4people, including a 7&9 year old. Stopped using 'childrens' plates inside about 3years ago.

We don't really do "best" and everyday. We have 2 sets that don't clash, and total 12 place settings. I want to have enough to host Eg my parents and my sister's family at the same time. But I am not bothered about them all matching.

Got for the 8.
I bought a really nice set and accidentally broke a two of the plates.
I have about 8 or 9 dinner plates (for everyday I don't like them to match)
and used to have one nice set. But I am going to replace with similar plated I have spotted for only 4 pound a plate.

We only have one ‘set’ of plain white crockery. In reality it isn’t a set at all, just a collection of random white things we have a accumulated over the years.

I cba with having sets of crockery, cutlery & glassware ‘for best’. In my experience this stuff never gets used, apart from perhaps Christmas Day, and is a waste of money and space. I remember thinking my mum was being ridiculous when she cried after one of her ‘best’ plates got smashed. It’s a plate, FFS!

We have 2 sets, plain white 12 of everything from Next - dc's & dgc's & me are fairly prone to smashing the crockery so as much as I'd love Denby/Conran etc, it's not worth it.

The 'best' set is 8 place settings plus serving dishes etc is Wedgewood (wedding present 30 years ago) but can supplement with the white for extra place settings. I'd love to use this all the time but in reality it wouldn't last long!

Sometimes I wonder if we should go back to the way they used to do it in the 17th century - any guests bring their own wooden bowl, cup, knife and spoon. Pleasingly minimal.

We don't even have sets anymore. After 20 years and several D.C. all of our plates etc are a good mix of various sets we have had throughout the years. Also a couple I have bought as singles when we have been short of a bowl or plate or 2.

I don't think we have many matching pieces

We bought two four piece Denby sets at Christmas. This was the first “fancy” set we’d bought. I think 8 is a lot better than 6. It’s just me DH and our toddler who does use our normal side plates and bowls fairly regularly. We have 8 at Christmas so it was a no brained, however being a traditional Denby set we’ll be able to replace bits as they get broken

12 place settings which all get used at family lunches although I don’t have 12 wine glasses any more.

And I’m using my gran’s 6 place set for every day. It had sat in a box for 50 years which seemed a waste.

I have a 4 piece. There are 3 of us, dh, me and ds - ds has his own crockery. If/when we entertain more than 2 people at once, which isn't very often, I'll buy more.

We hVe a 6 serving set of Denby juice with a few extra salad and side plates for 4 of us.

Denby, it's the dark green one and still current, we live near the Derbyshire factory and top up a few breakages and extra plates for Christmas day. 8-10 of the main items.

We don’t have posh sets or sets at all. We just get white ones and buy another plate etc when one inevitably gets smashed.

We have plain white John Lewis crockery with some Emma Bridgewater blue star side plates and mugs. Dh wanted some le creuset mugs so they are in with the EB ones too

I dont even know what a dining set is! Everything matching? In which case, we have zero

Everyday we have a set of 12, plain white - large plates, small plates, bowls

And fancy stuff is 14 people, inherited from granny. Absolutely beautiful antique set, lots of different sized plates, bowls and some serving stuff too

1. Almost everything is different.

5 plates, 5 soup bowls, about 10 various sized smaller salad bowls. Our cutlery is one type as we got a set of Berghoff from my parents almost 20 yrs ago.

On the other hand my parents have:

• set of 6 matching plates, small plates, soup bowl, salad bowls, desert bowl.
• set of 6 hand painted porcelain full set incl gravy dish and other serving plates and big soup serving thing. (Zsolnay) It is beautiful, but it only got used on christmas. Since we moved and the last 9 xmases were here at ours I don't think they ever use it
• we used to live in Iraq, so as a goodbye gift when moving back to home country they bought a gold plated cutlery set. It's ugly as hell, but the desert spoons have a camel at the top end - those are lovely :)

My everyday stuff is a mixture of blue and white plates and bowls - nothing really matches but it all "goes". Like the in poster above, all white is easy to pick up in shops and will look like a set.

We have a good set which has ten settings (wedding list) for most things.

For your day to day set I'd say go for the eight especially if you have a dishwasher as unless you're putting it on twice a day half your stuff will be in it by lunchtime.

I didn't realise it was so common to have a best set and an everyday set!

This will be our only and everyday set, it's a Wilko set but very nice, patterned so would have a hard time matching in future. We've gone with 8 sets including pasta bowls.

I live very close to the Denby pottery village! I couldn't commit to buying a whole dining set from there. I used to have my Grandmothers Denby dining set and had a matching tea set but gave it away because i thought it was a bit retro. Oh woe is me.

We have loads of the same range (Denby azure) as we are quite a large family and have guests over quite a lot. I like to have extra tea plates and little plates as these get used a lot with children in the house.

We bought 12 of everything. This was 15 years ago and it cost a fortune. However we use it everyday and when we have guests. Although it’s not still available in the shop, I can get individual pieces on Amazon and ebay

I have 12 place settings of everything. Plus some extras that picked up as seconds from the Denby outlet. These days my Denby china is the only stuff we have (apart from some “novelty” cereal bowls). I would like some more of the “serving” stuff though. I’ve got a couple of bits but hope to get a trip to the outlet again soon.....