We had such a wonderful evening at Esslingen’s first Diner en Blanc, hosted by the Esslingen Lion’s Club. It was a beautiful evening with great company, atmosphere, food, and live jazz. We even made some new friends. Let me tell you all about it!
Diner en Blanc originated in Paris and cities do their own versions. You dress all in white and bring your own three course meal for an elegant picnic at a public space in the city. The Lions Club made the Esslingen Schwörhof glow in beautiful light as they provided paper lanterns strung above, tables and chairs covered in white, lanterns, and a jazz band belting out tunes throughout the evening!
If you enjoy entertaining, creating nice meals, getting dressed up, and socializing this is such a great evening for you!
Preparing: the Menu and Packing
For Diner en Blanc, you create your own three course meal and pack it along with your tableware, stemware, and table decorations to bring to your dinner location. I spent some time thinking about our menu and decided to use our wedding china (since our kids were at home with a babysitter, ha!). I made the menu below (absolutely not needed to write it out, but this is what I do 😉 ). The next day we both said that the food was perfect for the event, since the melon and prosciutto was extremely easy to prep and eat, I made the bean salad ahead of time, and my husband made the steak before we left. The desserts were phenomenal, local, and required nothing from me but to pick them up. All in all, I thought it was minimal stress and truly stellar taste!
I also prepped our tableware, drinkware, linens, and everything we needed for our tablesetting ahead of time. This is fun for me and it also made execution easy. I used extra linen napkins between our dishes so nothing would break on the way over.
We packed it all into our roll cart and transport was a breeze. Thanks hubby for carrying everything! 😉
Diner en Blanc: the Event
Once we arrived to the Schworhof, we set up our tablescape, said hi to our table neighbors, and opened up some Kessler Sekt.
We mingled for a little until the Lions Club gave a speech about the evening before dinner started! I have to say that it really felt magical and special dining with 300 people in the center of the city, all donning white, while the band played and candles glowed. Everyone was excited to be there and it really was special!
We ate our dinner we chatted with our lovely tablemates, getting to know them and had an excellent time. The food also hit!
We’ve had a very dry summer here, but the weather called for rain showers this evening. Thankfully we brought two umbrellas last second and they were clutch as it started raining during dinner! It was so funny, while eating dinner everyone opened their umbrellas and carried on chatting, and within an hour the rain stopped and we put them away back under our tables. All in stride!
As the sun went down the evening really started to sparkle.
We can’t wait for next year! Thank you to the Lions Clun for putting on such a magical evening! xx
