Dinner with Damian and Friends – Host Gingersnap

It’s time to play Dinner with Damian and Friends, a fantasy dinner party game with THE ultimate guest list!

There are six chairs arranged around the dinner table – one for you, one for Damian, and four surprise VIP guests of your choosing. If you could invite any non-fictional person, living or having passed, to your fantasy dinner party, whom would you choose and why?

Would you send invitations? If so, what would the invitations look like -formal, handmade, electronic or something else? What kind of conversation would be overheard at the dinner table and do you choose your guests accordingly? Where would the dinner be held – home, public restaurant, secluded private dining area, fancy ballroom or other? What are the place settings like? Is the table round, square, or rectangle? Where does each guest sit? Would you cook, cater, or hire a private chef?  What’s on the menu? Is the food served family style, buffet, or plated? Is there a theme? What is the dress code? What else do you imagine for your dinner party?

Here are Gingersnap’s top VIP picks:

Gingersnap

Let’s start at the beginning, the invitation. My dinner party invite would be handmade on craft paper, presented in a roll and tied with twine and a fresh sprig accent. I would personally deliver the invitation to each guest’s doorstep.

On the invitation reads:

Dinner with Damian and Friends

Please join host Gingersnap for an evening with Damian and friends. Enjoy an outside garden dinner party in semi-formal garb, open bar, music and laughter.

Menu
Appetizers
Roasted eggplant dip with yogurt, avocado bruschetta, and grilled tomatoes with oregano and lemon

Salad
Mediterranean couscous salad

First Course
Grilled shrimp with bacon and lemon

Second Course
Your choice of flank steak with red onion or spiced pan-seared salmon. Garlic grilled corn with cotija cheese and squash noodles in garlic butter with lemon zest.

Dessert
Peach and basil crumbles, baked stuffed apricots, or lemon fig cake

I would hire a private chef because I need to mingle and the food would be served plated. My attire would be a maxi dress in some sort of floral design, and I’d definitely wear those flower heels!!!!

The dinner would be an intimate garden party outside on my backyard porch during the early evening hours. Brick pavers under our feet, a pergola overhead draped with twinkle lights and trees all around, cascading more string lights like diamonds. Solar garden lights line the landscape and pathway all around us, illuminating the botanicals ever present.

A chandelier hangs above the center of the table and lots of candles stock the round table top. Each place setting of mixed metals – gold, silver, bronze – has a petite flower arrangement and fresh cut flowers serve as the centerpiece on a white tablecloth. I would set the table in typical stacked fashion of charger, plate, bowl. The dinner plates are white, but the charger underneath is a different color for each setting, pulling from the colors of the flowers, and the third layer of bowls are mixed, silver or gold. Guests sit where they want. I chose a round table because the shape is perfect for encouraging conversation.

The back of each chair would be draped in flowers/greens, like this:

There would be a separate area on the porch dedicated to an open bar stocked with wine, champagne, gin, vodka, whiskey/bourbon, and tequila – the usual suspects. But themed cocktails would be the star. Ice cubes would be infused with flowers and edible flowers would float in some of the concoctions. Raspberry lemonade mixed with champagne, topped off with floating blueberries and a lemon slice is front and center.

So many possible guests came to my mind, from Mary Magdalene, Marilyn Monroe, Helen McCrory, J.K. Rowling and Oprah to Dr. Seuss, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Mr. Rogers, Pablo Picasso, Mozart, and Leonardo da Vinci.  I thought long and hard about having an Egyptian queen like Nefertiti or a pharaoh like King Tut present because I want to know how the pyramids were truly built. But ultimately I narrowed my guest list down to the following four VIPs:

William Shakespeare – someone from the literature world for Damian to test his chops

Ellen DeGeneres – someone funny to provide comic relief and keep us laughing

Princess Diana – someone who represents London or “home” for Damian

Vincent Van Gogh – someone from the art world to paint a picture of us at the end of the evening, memorializing the event

Background music would be supplied by my iPod on shuffle – playing anything from classical music and southern rock, to 70’s easy listening, British new wave and progressive rock. Something along the lines of: symphonies, Mozart, Little River Band, Christopher Cross, Elton John, Supertramp, Alan Parsons Project, The Church, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Fixx, combined with some current tunes from Florence + the Machine, Kings of Leon, Mazzy Starr, Muse, and Coldplay.

Topics of conversation overhead would range from Damian playing Van Gogh in a movie (my suggestion) to Shakespeare admitting he watched Damian as Antony in Julius Caesar: Friends, Romans, countrymen, a Shakespearean Solo. Damian asks Princess Diana what she thinks about The Crown on Netflix, and she raves about Claire Foy’s performance as a cold Queen – “spot on!”  Damian returns the pun stating Claire was a lovely Anne Boleyn until he had to chop her head off.

Author: Gingersnap

Management Analyst, part-time Adjunct Professor and Computer Software Consultant by day and Damian Lewis aficionado by night. View all posts by Gingersnap