Setting up a Stress-less Brunch
The content below may contain affiliate links, which means that when you click and shop the links, we receive a commission.
I love hosting on the weekends. It’s simpler, you have more time to plan and shop, and it’s more relaxed. If you’re unsure of where to start, I’m here to help! A few of my girlfriends and I got together the other weekend for the Garden Club of Virginia’s Historic Garden Week. I was more than happy to host our pre-tour brunch.
Since we were about admire some rather beautiful gardens around Old Town, I stuck with a garden party theme. The décor was simple. I opted for a few hydrangea we potted and selected Edwardian Garden cocktail napkins and guest towel napkins with the same colors in them.
I kept things simple by setting up a series of bars, or stations, for guests to help themselves. This also freed me up as hostess to refill drinks and chat around (my favorite carafe, which is also under $9!).
As you’re setting up your stations, make sure that you put yourselves in your guests’ shoes. Keep things intuitive. I always try to put flatware (obsessed with this bee motif set; individual place setting here) next to the plates at the beginning of the station to keep things moving. If you’re serving parfaits, consider having your spoons in a mint julep cup or vintage silver piece next to your fruit bowls and cocktail napkins.
Think about how you want your brunch to progress as you’re setting up your stations. Spacing out stations will help avoid traffic jams.
Brunch is a great chance for you to use your salad plates. We selected our “base” china pattern and made sure that it matched with different salad plates from patterns we liked. Getting a set or two of salad plates from a favorite pattern not only lets you mix and match for dinners, but it saves so much storage space. Since we were serving bigger items this morning, like bagels, I switched out our salads for dinner plates instead.
For our garden party brunch, I set up a prosecco and rose station so that my guests could help themselves to bubbles as soon as they arrived. Simple paper straws are a perfect little addition to protect lipstick. If you have a Keurig, Nespresso, etc., you can set up coffee bar using a basket lined with a linen napkin to house the pods and a creamer and sugar set.
We are on a Lidia Bastianich kick and, according to Lidia, a good bread basket is so important. I couldn’t agree more. Since we’re on brunch, I had a basket full of croissants, bagels, and muffins near the orange juice. You can add in breakfast pastries, a loaf of banana bread, etc.
A good bowl of fruit is a welcome and refreshing break. I set up a parfait bar with Greek yogurt, granola, honey, and berries. One of my other favorite things to have at brunch is quiche (similar marble trivet). It’s so simple and satisfying – and it keeps its temperature without needing to be heated up, which is almost always a problem when serving eggs other ways.
At our Cleanse, Clarify, and Celebrate brunch, we set up a toast bar. We had our four-slice toaster set up next to a platter (matching bowls, salad plates, and serving bowl) that included different kinds of whole wheat bread, avocados, seasonings, and a three-part condiment dish (high, medium, low options) with different kinds of butters (almond, peanut, and hazelnut or cashew). It was a hit!
Remember to keep things light, airy, and – most importantly – fun. Happy brunching!
This post may include some affiliate links, but all are Magnolia Stripes tried and approved!
