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Original poster

Dinner Party hell

407 replies

dinnerpartyhell · 01/07/2019 08:47

Please tell me what I am doing wrong.

It is customary where we live for friends to have lots of dinner parties, these range from silver service formal dinners all the way through to a relaxed buffet style supper.

I absolutely detest them, I hate hosting them with the two days of cleaning, cooking and preparing. The nerves that it will all go wrong (I am no Nigella) the endless inane conversations with people I barely know or care about. I try to talk to more interesting people, but after a few hours I have had enough even with the most sparkling character.

I don't even like going to other people's houses where it is the same in reverse. I like seeing my closer friends, but this all adds a layer stress/formality that is not normally present when we see each other day to day.

Please tell me why you enjoy them? (if you do) and what I can do to enjoy them more. I would have no friends if I opted out, as everyone has them. I wish I could enjoy them more, but I really don't. I dread them now, and it has got worse as time has gone on, not better. Everyone seems to go out every single weekend, and we are knackered from working long hours and caring for dc. How do you have energy to do this? After another weekend, I am exhausted today and really ready to throw in the towel and move to a desert island.

OP posts:
SolitudeAtAltitude · 01/07/2019 12:28

I have a boot room

yet, never do dinner parties....

ZebrasAreBras · 01/07/2019 12:31

OK Notcopingwell, the men can do those things instead, I won't stop them Grin

Send them down the pub was only a lighthearted figure of speech.

ZebrasAreBras · 01/07/2019 12:32

Lucky the men have you here to tell me off for 'sending them down the pub' Wink Otherwise who knows what could happen!

Cismyfatarse1 · 01/07/2019 12:37

Sorry - clearly failed to do the irony correctly. OP was wanting to get out of doing dinner parties. I would have thought offering up tinned spaghetti hoops was one way.....

I did do this once. Someone (we were students) threatened to take his wine back as "the food wasn't worth the wine." I had done it to cut down on that kind of pretentious behaviour.

dancinginthekitchen · 01/07/2019 12:37

I think you have a friend problem - friends come because they enjoy your company not the five star cooking (or lack of) or the formal occasion. This torture doesn’t sound like something friends do!
We have ‘come and sit in the garden and drink wine and eat cheese’ evenings, ‘takeaway’ evenings, off the cuff BBQs, walks with drinks and pub meals, Sunday lunches and a big Christmas party. It’s relaxed and with people we enjoy being with.
Will it matter if you are social pariahs to these people if it gives you the freedom to do things you enjoy with people you want to be with?

C8H10N4O2 · 01/07/2019 12:50

I need to be seventy five plus with replacement joints to join our WI

My DM is late 80s, in the WI and would laugh like a drain at this. They all abandoned formal dinner parties for less formal affairs at some point in the 80s. Nor would they have tolerated such appalling behaviour or catering solo for ridiculous numbers.

For large parties/special events they would use caterers if formal.

My DM lives in the SW!

WildAngel · 01/07/2019 12:51

omg this is like reading about another world!! Very amusing so i do apologise at being entertained by your discomfort! personally I've cut back on my fake friends and now invest my time in my family and proper friends - most of whom don't live nearby. Im none the worse for not having a riotous social life as the wild nights we do have with our friends take me ages to recover from anyway. Ditch the guilt of what you feel you "should" be doing and invest in what you "want" to do xx

bringincrazyback · 01/07/2019 12:51

I've never done dinner parties, they sound like absolute hell to me, but then tbh it irritates me in general, the way every social occasion seems to have to revolve around food these days. Whatever happened to just meeting friends for a drink (non-alcoholic obviously if driving) and a chat? Food just complicates everything imho.

HotChocolateLover · 01/07/2019 13:09

They are ok but a bbq is better. The last one I went to I had to keep rushing to the downstairs loo and sticking my tongue under the cold tap as the food was off the scale spicy. My eyes and nose were running. Plus the soup was vile and had pork in it which I don’t eat usually.

Genevieva · 01/07/2019 13:12

It sounds like you are stuck in a vortex, where everyone in this groups feel that every member must be invited to every occasion. How did you meet? Were you all parents at the same Prep School or something?

I am envisaging your friends with their identikit Land rover Discover 4s, wearing the same clothing brands and enjoying showing off their perfect homes. For whatever reason, they are happy in this privileged but dull bubble, but you clearly aren't.

You are slaving away to cater for people whose company you don't enjoy and who you probably hardly talk to. Life is too short. You need to shake things up. Decide who you really enjoy spending time with, invite them over for a kitchen supper, perhaps with people they haven't met before. No more than 6 guests. Preferably 4. Or, meet up for a dog walk followed by a drink at the pub. Or a takeaway night. If you think these friends can't cope with the transition, then ditch them. There are plenty of interesting people in the world worth spending time with.

Genevieva · 01/07/2019 13:14

Oh, and only invite guests who like your dogs, so you don't have to lock them away. If a guest makes a fuss about my dog planting her chin on their knee, they don't get invited back.

Thrupennybrit · 01/07/2019 13:30

Waitrose will lend out a fish kettle (and glasses) for free and you don't even need to buy the fish from there.

1forAll74 · 01/07/2019 13:33

Oh no, no dinner parties for me.my home is much too tiny anyway.

In my time,dinner parties were a thing,in the 1960 era,when some of my friends were newly married,and got their first houses, and some of them married quite wealthy men,and had fancy houses,and fancy everything,and wanted to show it all off, so a dinner party was mainly for that reason,and usually the cooking was rubbish, but the dinner ware and cutlery and sofa's were lovely ha ha.

NaturalBornWoman · 01/07/2019 13:37

I live in the country and have a boot room and a fish kettle. Sometimes friends come round for supper and some people might think some of them are quite smart. We don't have silver service dinners, but if for some weird reason this became necessary I would probably get caterers in. How do you do silver service without staff anyhow? Absolute load of tripe.

Original poster
dinnerpartyhell · 01/07/2019 13:54

cis Yes my friend's dh once said 'the evening 'wasn't worth the wine' he had gifted them I thought at the time it was extraordinarily rude. Incredibly, unforgivably rude. I think comments like this only add to my paranoia that my evenings are definitely not worth the wine!!!

I would cheerfully kick his scrawny arse out of the door if I ever heard him speaking about me like that (but of course he must, because those types of people are universally horrid to everyone) what my friend married him in the first place I shall never know.

OP posts:
Original poster
dinnerpartyhell · 01/07/2019 14:02

dancing my friends definitely don't come for my cooking I can assure you, I haven't killed anyone yet, but there is still time.

gene Pub dog walk sounds more like our kind of thing.

1forall Yes they are definitely just coming for the sofa and furnishings, and maybe dh's decanted wine, certainly not for the sparkling conversation as I not quite the butterfly I was, fading fast sadly! Silver service is very much offered, often by a much loved, often over worked housekeeper that has been taught carefully some time ago. Or sometimes the host. Not always, and not often, but sometimes. My favourite dinners are the ones that are disorganised with children and dogs running around.

OP posts:
dancingbadger · 01/07/2019 14:11

Just wandering how old your DCs are? We used to do a lot more entertaining when our DCs were young and went to bed at 6.00 and quite frankly I craved some adult company but now they are older (oldest DS is 12) I much prefer spending our Saturday nights with them, watching a film, chatting about their week etc, after all I'm assuming we'll only have a few more years of them actually wanting to spend their Saturday nights with us! I really don't miss the dinner party circuit and the judgemental bitchiness that can come from it, I will now say 'no' to nights out that I don't fancy (in a polite way) and just see those whose company we enjoy, it's not hard to do and very liberating go for it!

DeaflySilence · 01/07/2019 14:21

"I did buy the towels on holiday, I can't replace them easily, and because of the lace I can't boil wash them."

I would imagine the power of mumsnet could find a replacement quite easily, @dinnerpartyhell.

Photo of the damaged item, so we can try and match it, please?

Apolloanddaphne · 01/07/2019 14:28

The dog under the table is the very best part of having dinner at our house. In fact she is the very best thing about our family on the whole. People only come to see the dog not us!

BarbaraofSevillle · 01/07/2019 14:28

Or you have the perfect excuse for a series of French mini breaks with trips to Provencal markets.

Oh, what a shame, we can't come to or take our turn in hosting dinner parties, we're in France that weekend. Smile

pudding21 · 01/07/2019 14:33

What a bizarre thread.

Maybe all you friends feel the same, how about being honest and fessing up you hate them? If they think badly of you because of this, find better friends. Why anyone would do this just to keep anyone else happy is beyond me.

Is it only your dog that sees a therapist? Because I imagine some therapy for people pleasing would be good for you, without sounding harsh.

#thirdworldproblems

DeaflySilence · 01/07/2019 14:34

"Silver service is very much offered, often by a much loved, often over worked housekeeper that has been taught carefully some time ago."

At a formal dinner, you have your housekeeper dishing up at the table under the guise of 'silver service'? You taught her this???

I'm calling bollocks!

ashtrayheart · 01/07/2019 14:40

This is a different world to mine!
Once I gave up drinking 2 years ago, I stopped the occasional drunken bbq we used to have as I actually dislike socialising. Apart from a few close friends who I tend to see out of the house, I’m always concerned I won’t be able to make them go home otherwise Smile

Original poster
dinnerpartyhell · 01/07/2019 14:53

deafly no it certainly was not my housekeeper!!!! I would never do this, it was organised that way for dinner at someone else's house.

dancing dc are older, similar ages and older to yours. We have a lot less energy now I find enthusiasm!

pudding I did speak to one or two friends, and they were genuinely not on board with the idea that I stop doing the dinners, thought it was a very bad idea! I could stop of course, and not bother and I don't think I would see them very much anymore.

OP posts:
Puppytooth · 01/07/2019 15:49

Are people still biting?! Well done OP!