Behind the Scenes: Anatomy of a Dinner Party

When I put together this dinner party shoot last month, I had Sarah snap some pictures of me setting everything up too. So I could share some behind the scenes photos with you today.

And in the true spirit of Behind the Scenes, I have an embarrassing image or two in the mix to remind us all that things aren’t always as they seem.

I mean, it’s basically a hot mess around here, at times. But it’s my hot mess and I like it.

So check out this post to see the final shots of my recent dinner party shoot and then head back here, so we can jump into the behind the scenes stuff.

First up, garlands…

To get the knotted garlands at the correct height for the photographs, I had to tape them to the window on one side and then the opposite wall. Normally, I would hang them from the ceiling, but the swoop I wanted just wouldn’t have worked if I hung them that high. Plus, it’s super official this way, right? With painter’s tape and everything. Very chic. Ha.

Aaaand you can also see that I never fully painted the wall behind me (which I’ve since fixed, but it was like this for way longer than I care to mention). We cropped it out of all of the photos, so no one was the wiser. Well, until now.

Here’s how the finished garlands turned out…

Let’s talk flowers… I changed the centerpiece a couple of times during the shoot because it wasn’t feeling right.

I tried one floral centerpiece. Then added a couple more as a second option. And then removed the flowers all together to go with something much more minimal (which I ended up scrapping).

It was good to have options, but in the end, I decided on multiple floral centerpieces for the colors and the variety of heights, to fill the frame for certain photos that I knew I wanted Sarah to be able to capture.

On to the food prep…

I don’t have a honey dipper, so I used the handle of a spoon instead, to drip honey over the goat cheese and fig crostinis. It worked just as well, so I ended up including the idea in the hacks for the original post.

But initially, it was just a behind the scenes thing, that I hadn’t planned on sharing.

At the end of the day, things started looking a lot like this (above). Piles of food and other random goodies. Falling garlands. All of that.

But nothing a few slices of cake couldn’t cure. Right? Cake makes everything better.

Photography by Sarah Eddy

Have your own behind the scenes moments to share? Id love to hear how you approach styled shoots. Or even just a funny or embarrassing moment you have to share.