New Year’s Eve Table Setting: A Sparkly Champagne Snowflake Celebration

Welcome to the big reveal of the Non-State Fair Tablescape Competition 2025 – a Sparkly Champagne New Year’s Eve Table Setting! If you don’t know about the non-competition yet, you can get all the backstory at this post: Not Quite a Tablescape Competition – Designing in Public, then carry on with this one: New Year’s Eve Tablescape – Trying To Plan A Sophisticated Winner.

But basically, I couldn’t enter the state fair tablescape competition this year because I won last year. So I decided I’d share the process as if I were going to enter!

So in the spirit of designing in public, I’ll take you through this final process. Here’s where we ended up.

I love the lights, but they really do change the color of the table in the photos. In real life, it wasn’t as yellow, and the original peaches were a lot more peachy. Like this.

Quick little aside: I’m still SO in love with those flowers! I have to share this one picture with you. After I got all my flowers, I laid them on the table for a few days before I got started. And one time when I was coming in through the back door, I caught sight of them draping over the edge of the table, and the were SO BEAUTIFUL! The peaches against the gold and black just made my heart sing!

But let’s start at the beginning.

The Champagne Table Topper

I had gotten the champagne sequin table topper, but if you’ve read the earlier posts, you’ll have noticed that it had a simple sewed edge – no trim of any kind. Not only was it too small to make it all the way across the corners of the table, that edge didn’t look very elegant or very celebratory for our New Year’s Eve table setting.

So I ordered this beautiful trim. It really is gorgeous in person, and rich and luxurious. I can’t wait to figure out something wonderful to do with it when I’m done with the table. I basted it along the edge of the topper, and voila!

The New Year’s Table Setting Overhead Display

The thing I was particularly excited about was my new table rod. I love the flowers overhead, and I think it would look even lovelier on a longer table. With this tiny of a table, the scale doesn’t work out quite as well as I’d like. But that aside, I absolutely love it!

I was concerned about the clamps messing up the tablecloth – and yes, they did. I had to be really careful to fold the tablecloth up so the clamps didn’t pull too hard and maybe rip it. But even then, it messed up the drape of the fabric.

I covered it pretty well though, with some cascading flowers. See? You can hardly find it in there, and the slight gathering of the cloth barely showed.

Adding the Flowers

The next thing to do was to prepare the rod to hold all the flowers. I have to share this picture too just because I thought it was funny how big a pile of tags I had when I cut them all off my new flower purchases. One year, I got marked down in the competition because I had forgotten to remove a tag! So even though I’m not really going to be judged this year, I wanted to make sure I got them all off!

I’d heard about using chicken wire to make a holder for flowers, so I thought I’d try that. It worked pretty well, but if you try this, plan to secure it really well so it doesn’t flip over when you put the flowers in! My two little pieces of tape in the first round didn’t really do the job!

But I secured it better as I went along.

I put the larger flowers in first.

I’d decided to use the long flowers for the sides, so I left them out. I had to trim the stems quite a bit, since they’re so long. With this method, I couldn’t really fold them over as I would in a large vase, for instance.

I messed around with the flowers for quite a while, then added some crystal-looking snowflakes.

The clamps also needed to be covered on the table top, so I added some extra flowers there too.

The little bit of gold that shows through doesn’t really detract from the overall look, I didn’t think.

I added some silver streamers to the flowers, and our top bar was ready to go! I was hoping it looked both festive and champagne-y, and not too wedding-y. Although I think it could be beautiful for a wedding!

Starry Lights Among the Blooms

I had always planned to have some lights in the flowers, but it took a while to find the right ones. If I was really going to enter this table in the state fair contest, I wouldn’t be able to plug anything in. So the lights would need to be battery operated. I wasn’t sure that batteries would last the entire length of the fair, but I figured as long as they were on for the judges, that would be ok.

I eventually found these little stars, and I think they’re just right!

Fortunately, the battery pack fit right inside the clamp! Completely concealed under the hanging flowers, and easy to turn on and off too! No unsightly cords to ruin my design!

The New Year’s Eve Table Setting Itself

And now for the actual New Year’s Eve table setting! As I mentioned in my earlier post, I was really going back and forth about the flatware. The silver seemed to disappear into the tablecloth, and I couldn’t find anything else I liked.

I had kind of discarded the silver chargers I tried early on, and was pretty well set on using black chargers. But at some point, I just decided to see what some fancier silver ones would look like. I put the silver flatware back on the table with them, and that seemed to make the difference. I loved the two of them together!

So, along with the silver wine bucket, the silver and champagne color scheme seemed to work pretty well.

Candlelight!

I always love candles on my tables, but I was originally worried about having them on this table because of all the flowers. If I were judging, I wouldn’t like candles being so close to something flamable. But one of my lovely blogging friends suggested flameless candles, and I knew that was the answer!

I got these candles, as well as the crystal holders and the hurricane sleeves (which I’d been wanting for a long time.)

They solved the ‘flammable’ problem, and added some extra height to the table too.

The Complete New Year’s Eve Table Setting – Including The Closeups

So here’s what the whole tabletop looks like. It has a lovely champagne glow from all the lights.

You can get a good look at the little extras too – the champagne bucket, the place card holder, and the teacup and saucer. (Which on a real table, would not be set at the beginning unless tea was an integral part of the actual meal. But in the state fair competition, you need to set one.)

I love this china pattern, and I think the teacup is particularly elegant.

Place card holders with computer-printed names are also a requirement of the state fair category I would have been entering. I wanted one that matched the tone of the table, but I wasn’t finding anything that would really work. I finally found these little frames that were sparkly, and fit with the vibe.

They also added a little height and mass to the middle of the table.

The champagne bucket is a lovely silver one I’ve had forever. See it behind all the glasses?

I got a bottle of sparkling wine with a gold top to bring the gold and silver together. It looked so pretty with the snowflake and the flowers nearby!

I did a little bow-tie napkin on the plate to give a nod to our black-tie-style New Year’s Eve table setting.

The Menu

One of the main things in the tablescape competition is the menu. You not ony have to think up a delicious-sounding one, it has to match with the theme, and also the place setting. This is one of my favorite parts – I love to plan a menu, and I always do one I’d really like to eat.

Since this year’s category was a fancy celebration, my menu had several celebratory type courses. You also need to pick a sort of sub-theme – it can’t be just New Year’s Dinner. Mine was the Champagne and Snowflakes of course, so I wrote that on the menu.

Often entrants write a description of the table or sub-theme, but that usually means you have to have another piece of paper or framed thing on the table. I really didn’t want that this time, so I just left it at putting the title on the menu.

I also made the border kind of match the border on the chargers, just for extra style. (The place cards have this border too. Cohesion, right?)

Extra New Year’s Eve Table Setting Photos

I took literally hundreds of pictures, so I’ll give you a few more for your tablescape enjoyment!

This first one is a great one for going through all the competition points. I’ll just list them off quickly so you an get the idea. If you want the scoring in more detail, see this post: The very surprising results of the 2023 tablescape competition.

Ok so here we go:

• Everything has to be within the confines of the table.
• Table skirt can’t touch the ground. (You can’t actually see that in this picture, but you can tell in the last picture.)
• The plates, flatware, and teacup have to be an inch from the front edge of the table.
• Knife and dinner fork have to be 1 inch from the edge of the charger plate.
• Menu has to be easy to read from the viewing area. (Behind the ropes.)
• Each diner has to have a clear view of the other diner.
• Place cards have to be typed.
• Plates and glasses have to be laid out properly per the diagram. (You can see the diagram in the post above.) (I always like my glasses to be in a straight diagonal line right across the table.)
• Teacup handle should be turned to the 4:00 position.
• Plates have to be centered in the middle of the setting.
• Plates have to be centered on top of each other.

Thanks For Joining Me for The Non-Competition Tablescape!

I hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes process as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you! Let me know what you think in the Comments, and take care till next time!

Barbara’s Boutique Recommendations

Click on the pictures of the pieces I used in this post. If the exact item isn’t available any more, I chose a similar option.

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Shared with

• Tablescape Thursday 09.11.25 – Hosted by Between Naps on the Porch
• Tuesday Turn about 09.16.25 – Hosted by My Wee Abode