The Best Thanksgiving Plates
I went through our Butler’s Pantry and found my favorite Thanksgiving plates. I have been collecting plates for years, and I love them!
What I love most about the Thanksgiving holiday is the focus on gratitude, family, and friends. This holiday is all about setting a table that makes everyone around it feel loved and cared for!
Thanksgiving Plates
There is so much tradition with Thanksgiving Day and don’t laugh, but I think it’s one of the most important tables I set every year! Fortunately, I also host Friendsgiving the week before, so I am happy that I get to set two different tables.
I want to start out by saying that Thanksgiving plates do not need to be brown and white, nor do they need to have turkeys on them! You can use whatever plates you want, and I highly encourage all of you to think outside the box.
That said, Thanksgiving is a great time to pull out your china (or your grandmother’s china) because the meal is often a perfect time to honor family traditions.
Have I managed to confuse you by now?
I didn’t mean to confuse you, Rather, I want you all to know that you can do whatever you want when selecting the Thanksgiving plates for your table. There are no rules.
None.
Mix Your Plates
Most of the time, I mix my Thanksgiving plates because our family tends to gather here for the big dinner. I certainly don’t have 24 of the same plates, and I often mix plates when I set a table for eight.
My advice when it comes to mixing is to do it by color. I have quite a few brown and white plates (and some with turkeys!), so I usually start with those. Then, I add off-white plates, gold-rimmed plates, black and white plates, and more.
Of course, it’s not only fun to mix the dinner plates. Some bright colors on salad plates can add so much personality to your table. Brown and white plates go with just about every color. I love adding blue, orange (and copper), pink, green, and purple decorative plates to my table with my brown plates.
Thanksgiving Plates Suggestions
I put together six ideas for Thanksgiving plates. You don’t need to use exactly these plates. I hope to encourage you to mix what you already own.
Here are the six place settings I came up with. We are hosting 21 family members for Thanksgiving this year, so you know that I could use all of these mixed together.
The Celebration Place Setting
The first place setting is more casual, with a linen-look placemat, a wood cutting board, and my flea-market Spode Celebration dinner plates.
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The Black and White Place Setting
The second option is less traditional, and I intentionally went with a non-brown and white theme. I have used these hyacinth placemats a gazillion times, and the salad plates are part of my Wedgewood Edme collection that I bought at an estate sale. The wonderful black-and-white dinner plates are from Amazon but sadly they are out of stock.
The Delamare Place Setting
This is one of my favorite place settings. The place cards were made with my Cricut machine, and the leaf chargers were made with my Iron Orchid Design Moulds. I wrote a blog post sharing the DIY to make the Fall Leaf Chargers. These Spode Delamere plates are amazing, and I love them! The glassware with the gold design is from Anthropologie. I love them, and they have highball glasses and champagne flutes. The wine glasses can be found here.
The Grindley Place Setting
This is another non-traditional place setting. I featured my new floral plates (I have both dinner and salad plates). They are Grindley England Old China Marlborough Royal Petal plates. I don’t have a link to share for these as it only took me years to find the dinner and salad plates. Crazy, huh?
The Spode Festival Place Setting
Copper is my favorite accent color, and I love my copper chargers, candlesticks, bowls, and more. These turkey plates are Spode Festival Brown Dinner plates. I made the napkins with a stencil I made from a glue gun. You can find the DIY here.
The Garden Bouquet Place Setting
This is my sixth recommendation for Thanksgiving plates, which have more of a cranberry/pink theme. I have been Collecting Cranberry Glass for years, and I love to use it year-round.
So, which one was your favorite?
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I love them all. I guess that’s why I would love to sit down at a table set by you. You just never know what you will see and what inspiration you can get. I have made a few of your DIYs, the charger with the leaves, painted a tea towel to match the colour of my kitchen. I also put the rose gold leaf on plastic apples. I enjoy looking for your email every day and seeing what’s new.
I am so glad you are enjoying! Thanks so much, MaryLou.
My table is built around my blue Turkey plates. I love using that color and offers so much opportunity to use accessories to make it different every year. Collecting China for over 50 years has given me a lot of variety to work with.
I love that Suzi! Sounds beautiful ☺️
Gorgeous place settings. I love the mix and match. Happy Fall, my friend.
Thank you, my friend!
Delamare Place Setting and the Bouquet plates. I really love your silverware. What pattern is it, please?
Thanks for sharing this idea. I was looking for some plates that I can use for my thanksgiving party.
I am so happy to help!
I love this post and I love Thanksgiving. It is all of the things you mentioned, mostly family time. When I was a kid my mom used a variety of plates. I told her that when I grew up all of my dishes would match. How funny is it that they don’t! I love to do just what you do with using the same colors but different patterns. I have a weakness for dishes. My favorites are antique blue and white turkey plates that my sister gave me. I love using them and mixing them with other blue and white dishes. Happy Friendsgiving and Happy Thanksgiving!
Haha I totally understand! Hope you have a lovely thanksgiving this year, Kathy!
I am having 15 people, which makes the table challenging. I don’t like the idea of a “kids” table. I have a large table and can get 12-13 fairly comfortable. Any suggestions on extending — we do have about 2 feet to play with. I’m stumped!
Do you have any small tables you could add on? That might work! And they don’t have to be separated!
It’s all gorgeous, but I am partial to the Spode Celebration. I’m always on the lookout at Estate sales for them. My husband says just use paper plates🤦♀️
Haha I understand!
I love the paper plate idea. Ha, ha, ha
I love all of the dishes and charges. I have a service for 24 of brown transferware that my grandmother left me. I love it so much and always use it for holidays. Mix and matching dishes is so beautiful. Just love the look of it.
Oh that is amazing! I love the brown transfer ware.
Do you serve different courses for each plate? Or are they just to look pretty? I love the idea of mixing different plates.
So beautiful! A Thanksgiving tablescape is my all time favorite. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks so much Renae! It’s one of mine too- so festive and beautiful, I love the colors!
Oh they’re all gorgeous Leslie! I could look at your tablescapes all day! I’ve been keeping my eye out for brown transferware, and now I’ll add some turkeys to my list! 🙂 Thanks as always for inspiring me!
Oh my goodness, thanks so much Barbara! Thanks for being here, so glad you feel inspired ☺️
I love the gold name tags written in script.
How do you go about making them or ordering them. They are so unique!
Thanks so much!
I made them on my Cricut with metallic Cricut poster board. It’s the best for these kinds of projects ☺️🙌🏻
Very helpful and impressive content. Thank you so much.
Oh thanks so much Amelia! So happy you’re here!