Dinner party invitation

Chef's Surprise

The wine is poured first, and the plate it was chosen for arrives nine minutes later.

Part of the TinselLux™ collection: invitations in stitched leather, tufted velvet, linen and satin.

The material is the card: linen with a visible weave, velvet with a nap, leather with its grain. It costs the same as every other invitation.

See the collection

A dinner party invitation that comes with no menu attached: guests sit down at a laid table and learn what dinner is one plate at a time. The table is set properly before anyone arrives, water glasses included. There is no bread basket to fill up on, which is intentional. The host disappears between courses and returns holding two plates, says what is on them in about six words, and goes back to the kitchen.

Somewhere around the fourth plate the guessing starts. Someone decides the next course is fish and is wrong. Someone else works out that the oven has been going since four and builds a theory around it. The pacing slows, the wine keeps arriving ahead of the food, and by the last course nobody has looked at a phone. Then the host sits down at the end of the table and eats, for the first time all evening.

What goes on it

Every line replaceable

The wording on this card

A table has been set
Saturday, May 22, 2027 · 7:30 PM
THE LONG ROOM · 31 Course Lane, Amuse Creek, OR
Nobody knows. Wine is poured.

Every line of the wording is an example, and yours to replace. The title is painted into the artwork. Type your own and it is drawn again with your words.

What to actually tell people

Count the burners before you count the courses Six plates on a domestic stove is a scheduling problem, not a cooking one. Build the menu so that only one course needs heat at the moment of serving, and let the rest be room temperature or already in the oven.
Collect the allergies in advance, privately Ask each guest by text a week out, then design around the answers. The surprise only works if nobody at the table has to ask what is in it.
Decide what you say when you set the plate down One short line per course, named plainly. It keeps the pacing formal and stops you standing over the table explaining the sauce for four minutes.
Pour ahead of the plate Pairing is optional, so one bottle for the first half and one for the second is enough. Fill glasses while the next course is resting, so the kitchen trip and the pouring trip are the same trip.

Start from this one

The artwork
Keep this one, or describe your own party and get artwork drawn for it.
The wording
Every line on this card is an example, the painted title included. Change all of it; the design holds.
Sending
By text, from your own number. Guests open a link. Nothing to download.
The price
One credit for the invitation. Six guests or sixty, the number does not move.