The annual celebration of Chinese New Year is always a great excuse to bring the banqueting furniture back out after the traditional UK holiday season of Christmas and New Year's Eve is over.
On February 8th 2016, the Year of the Monkey begins, and will last through until January 27th 2017; as usual, festivities for Chinese New Year are likely to last for longer than just one day, making the weekend of February 6th-7th a possible time to hold events if you do not want to schedule them for a weekday.
And while we may often think of monkeys as being cheeky and impolite, in the Chinese Zodiac this is not the case, making this celebration a surprisingly suitable time to hold even a very formal and smart dinner party.
The pronunciation of monkey in Chinese - 'Hou' - was the same as the word used for a marquis in the 8th-5th centuries BC, leading to a greater amount of respect than we give monkeys in the present day, and they were often compared to the cleverest of humans.
Even the traditional lucky colours of this creature - white, gold and blue - make an excellent colour scheme for a dinner party, and even for banqueting furniture itself which can be gold-framed with blue upholstery.
Table groupings should ideally seat either seven or eight people, which again are considered lucky for the monkey, and if you are using rectangular banquet tables, try to align them to the north, west, or north-west, all of which are lucky compass points for the monkey too.
Chinese astrology can even tell you what to serve at your banquet, especially to diners who were born in the Year of the Monkey themselves - with a relatively poor forecast for their diet over the coming year, plenty of vegetables, cereals, and foods that are high in nutrition should be on the menu.
Of course not everyone believes in the predictions made by astrology, whether using Chinese or Western methods - but it's still a great excuse to set out the banquet tables for another great celebration.