Here’s How to Set a Beautiful Easter Table on a Budget
Easter is one of those holidays that can send you down the literal rabbit hole on Pinterest — especially if you’re hosting the holiday at your house. Should you turn eggs into little bunnies to use as place card holders? How can you fold those napkins into bunny ears? Would it be impossible to make that cake that looks like a little bunny butt? As nice as they are, all of these Easter moments take time, craft skills, and money.
If you’re short on any of that (we are!), just keep it simpler. We challenged ourselves to create a beautiful Easter brunch table that doesn’t take much at all — a table with smart, simple decor that anyone can do.
Here’s how we did it.
Start with a white(ish) tablecloth(ish).
Everything looks more elegant and fresh on a white tablecloth. Easter is the one holiday where we really love to break out the linens.
But tablecloths can be expensive — especially for a table that seats eight or 10. Here’s a little tip: Try the gentle, relaxed look of an off-white canvas drop cloth. If you don’t have a tablecloth that works for the occasion, head to … a hardware store. That’s right — canvas drop cloths (like this one from Home Depot!) provide a great, inexpensive backdrop and can be doubled up or even be cut to fit your table.
Pick one up at Home Depot, Lowe’s, or Amazon. Cheap and easy.
- Everbilt Canvas Drop Cloth, $13 at Home Depot
Add flowers of one type and one color. Arrange in (free!) mismatched glass jars.
The single best tip we can give anyone when it comes to flowers for a table? Get one kind. It makes arranging them so much easier. We got a couple of inexpensive bunches of yellow tulips from the grocery store and trimmed them, then broke them up between a few different glass jars.
Yes, jars — as in, the stuff that was just sitting in the recycling bin. We rounded up jars from pickles, olives, and salsa (all different heights and widths), soaked the labels off, and gave them a good cleaning with some dish soap and water. Instant vases!
Decorate with your Easter eggs! (And some candy).
When we say we put a bunch of eggs in a bowl and called it a day, we are not egg-aggerating. (Sorry, we couldn’t help it.) If you are celebrating Easter, you are probably decorating Easter eggs anyway, or have some on hand. Pile your prettiest in a medium bowl, and fill in around the eggs with some foil-wrapped Easter candy or pretty jelly beans of (again!) just one color to look elegant.
And of course it doesn’t hurt to put an extra bowl of Easter candy on the table.
Go with mismatched plates and napkins for a relaxed and confident look.
Whether you’re throwing an Easter brunch or a dinner, there is zero need to worry about having enough matching pieces. There’s just something so beautiful and casually confident about mis-matched stuff and how it comes together.
Go through your cabinets and pull out plates and servingware in the same color family or anything that vaguely looks like it goes together. Once you get it on the table, it’ll look very Joanna Gaines-y of you.
This goes for serving dishes, too. So what if you don’t have a matching suite of casserole dishes and serving platters? It’s actually better and more charming that you don’t! (Tip for the next time you’re out shopping, though: We almost always prefer a simple, white serving dish over a frillier one with a color or pattern because it helps the food shine.)
As far as flatware is concerned, this is the one place we opted for matching pieces because it helped tie the table together. However, if you don’t have enough of the same forks for everyone, IT’S FINE! Mix up the sets so that everyone has a smattering of different utensils.
Can you guess our tip for napkins? Used mismatched fabric napkins! Once again, you don’t need to have a complete set of any one color or pattern. Just pick out a few that seem like they go together and fold them nicely (forget about those bunny ears!).
If you don’t have enough napkins for your crew, either go thrifting for a few more, or skip the fabric napkins entirely and pick some stylish, heavy-duty paper napkins from IKEA. Fold them in triangles and lay on the plates. We love this mix of pink and black and white.
- AVSIKTLIG Paper Napkins, $2 for 30 at IKEA
- FANTASTISK Paper Napkins, $2 for 50 at IKEA
Shop Our Easter Brunch Table
We want to stress that you probably don’t need to buy anything to pull off a similar Easter table. But we also know that a lot of you are probably going to want to know where some of these things came from, so here’s a little shopping list.
- Everbilt Canvas Drop Cloth, $13 at Home Depot
- Kayden Matte Black Silverware, $20 for five-piece set at Target
- Hearth & Hand with Magnolia Stoneware Debossed Dinner Plates, $25 for four at Target
- Ombre Painted Easter Eggs, $15 for 12 at Terrain