10 Tips For Stress-Free Christmas Feast

Hosting a Christmas Feast can be stressful with all the preparation, cooking, baking and decorating! I hope these tips will help you plan, prepare and host a delightful Christmas Feast!

Tip 1. Guests – Decide how many guests and who you want to invite

Before anything else, you need to decide the exact number of your guests! Will it be a family or friend Feast? Can they bring their partners, children? If you host a family Christmas Feast, close or extended family? If you host a friend Feast, the close or extended circle of friends?)

For a pleasant Feast you need to consider how many guests you want to deal with, also who gets along with who and who not! My opinion is if your guests happy (with you and with each other), you’ll be happy too!

Personally, I can handle only 10-15 guests, this way I can keep up with the conversation, I can answer them, make sure they enjoy themselves!

Tip 2. Decide the budget

Unless you’re a millionaire and don’t have to bother with money, you need to decide the budget of your Feast! Without budget and planning, the cost of your party probably will skyrocket. The budget mostly depends on the number of your guests, how fancy you plan your feast to be and how many courses you want to serve to your guests.

When you plan your budget, remember you don’t want to be broke after the Holidays and a Christmas Feast not worth to bankrupt! Also, little things, small details, last-minute shopping can increase the costs (very). Don’t ignore them during planning!

Tip 3. Do you want to hire catering company or make the dishes on your own

It’s a pretty simple thing to decide, but make this decision at the beginning of the planning! Most catering companies are full around the Holidays, so you probably should hire them at least a month before the Feast!

Tip 4. Decide and plan the courses

As I mentioned before you need to decide how many courses and how fancy courses you want to serve to your guests!

If you decided to make the dishes on your own, the next step is to determine if you want to make familiar dishes or try something new! If you plan to try something new, please make them at least once before, so you’ll know what you need for them (ingredients, tools, tableware), also you will know how long it takes to make! That’s said, consider the preparation, cooking, baking time when you decide the menu.

Tip 5. What to make and what to buy

After you set the menu, you need to decide which dish or which part of the dish you want to buy or want to make it on your own. There’s no shame to store buy some of your dishes or some part of the dishes such as sauces, filing, box cake, salad, etc.

Tip 6. Create shopping list and purchase

After you decided the menu and what to buy and what to make, create a shopping list. While making the shopping list, consider adding the tools, bakeware and tableware and cleaning items as well besides the ingredients. It can be a long and scary list, but you need to be aware of your costs before and not just when you check out. Also, you can still change the menu at this point.

Tip 7. Clean and preparation

Before the Holiday madness, the best way to prevent losing your mind and freak out is to clean, organize and prepare your kitchen! If you know exactly where you find what and you prepared everything, you start cooking already calmer. Also, make sure you have enough tableware to serve every course to everyone!

Tip 8. Make ahead

Decide what you can make a day/days ahead! After you know what you can prepare before the Holiday hustle and bustle, make sure you can store them too! There are a ton of freezer-friendly recipe and food preparation out there on the internet, use them! Also, it’s time to decorate the table and the room(s) too.

Tip 9. Don’t do it alone

Ask someone to help you, but consider who you can easily work with! You’ll only stress out if you try to do everything at once alone, it’s not worth it!
For example, I can simply work in the kitchen with my Fiancé, we understand each other easily and no need for minutes long explaining every task.

Tip 10. Prepare the tableware, cutlery and get ready

If you left anything to cook, bake on the day of the Feast, make sure to prepare every tableware, cutlery, and platters you’ll need before you start to cook.

When you start the remaining cooking, baking, start with what takes the longest, also decide what you can make at the same time. For example, you can cook something, while you’re baking something else and you can chill another thing at the same time! (see Tip 9.)

Congratulation, you survived and hopefully had a stress-free Christmas Feast planning, preparing and creating!

All in all, the most important is to enjoy yourself, have fun and have a wonderful time!

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