Formal China Sets

I just went to Bed Bath and Beyond today to checked out the stuff they have available for bridal shower gifts.

Just curious, why are there so many formal china sets without bowls? Most only come with a cup and 4 plates?!?

Who the hell (pardon the language) needs 4 different sizes of plates? What if I wanna serve soup or stew to my guests?

Anyone else wonder about this?

Eeek...I know what you mean..

I used to work as a Bridal Consultant for the registery at Macys.

Basically, a true, formal, china place setting, consists of 5 pieces:Dinner plate, Salad Plate, bread and butter plate, cup and saucer. Thats considered formal, especially for the display. And unfortunately, the soup bowl is sold separately.

However, there are some new patterns that toss out the bread and butter and throw in the soup bowl, or make it a 4 piece place setting and just have the dinner plate and soup bowl. Mikasa has a lot of patterns that inludes the soup bowl, there are some formal ones from mikasa as well, I would say the majority of them are casual though.

On the flip side..if you really love a certain china pattern, that comes without the soup bowl, still register for the soup bowls, however , A lot of times places like macys and fortunoffs will run a buy one place setting get free soup bowl sorts of specials....so while it stinks that its separate..you'll still end up getting them....HTH