How to Set a Place Setting for Thanksgiving Dinner

It’s finally November and in anticipation of the Thanksgiving Holiday we’ve put together a guide on how to set a place setting for Thanksgiving dinner.

Start your setting by placing the dinner plate on the table centered in front of the individual’s chair. The salad plate will be placed on top of the dinner plate with the soup bowl on top of the salad plate.  The bread and butter plate will be the smallest of the plates and is placed on the table to the top left side of the dinner plate.

Next you will set the flatware out in order of the course, as a general rule you will use your flatware from the outside of the setting in.

Knife – place on the right side, closest to the plate

Soup Spoon – outside right of knife

Dinner Fork – place on the left side, closest to the plate

Salad Fork – the salad fork is the smaller of the two forks and goes on the left outside of the dinner fork

The dessert fork will be placed horizontally above the dinner plate with its handle going towards the other forks. The coffee spoon will be placed directly above the dessert fork with the handle going towards the other spoons.

Lastly the water glass goes on the top right side of the plate with the wine glass to the right of it. The coffee cup will be placed on top of its saucer to the right of the wine glass and above knife and spoons.  Lastly the napkin will be folded and placed either on top of the soup bowl or to the left of the forks.