A Rosh Hashanah table built in the order the night actually happens, from the cover that goes down before anyone arrives to the honey pot the whole meal turns around, priced from our Thornhill shelves.
Everything on this table exists to serve one moment: the apple going into the honey.
Good Rosh Hashanah table decorations are not chosen by theme. They are chosen by sequence, because a Rosh Hashanah table is one of the few tables in the year where the decorations have a job to do at a specific minute of the evening. The honey pot matters when the apple goes in. The place cards matter when fourteen people who see each other twice a year are trying to work out where to sit. Build the table in the order the night happens and you stop buying things that have no moment.
I help GTA families style this holiday every September, and the ones who leave our counter with the right basket are the ones who can tell me what happens first. So this guide is arranged the way the evening is arranged, not the way a catalogue is. Everything in it is priced from stock sitting on our shelves at 7724 Yonge Street right now.
Key Takeaways
- Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins at sundown on Friday September 11, 2026 and ends at nightfall on Sunday September 13.
- The first day is Shabbat this year, so most households are setting a festive table four times across one weekend instead of the usual three.
- A complete place setting costs $11.16 per guest at our shelf prices. A full table for eight, shared centrepiece included, is $132.79.
- Twelve guests is the most expensive number to host, at $18.47 a head, because it forces a second table that only half fills.
- The centre of the table is one purchase, not a display. A honey pot at $14.99 does more work than $50 of scattered decor.
- Buy per moment, not per guest. The apple, the challah and the seating are three separate problems and only one of them scales with headcount.
When Does Rosh Hashanah Start in 2026?
Sundown on Friday September 11, 2026, running through nightfall on Sunday September 13. You can check the exact civil dates against the Hebcal calendar for Rosh Hashanah 2026, which is what most GTA shuls publish from.
The detail that changes your shopping this year is the Friday start. Because the holiday begins on a Friday evening, the first day of Rosh Hashanah lands on Shabbat, and the two run straight into each other with no ordinary weekday in between. Count the festive meals and you get four: Friday night, Saturday lunch, Saturday night, Sunday lunch. In a normal year you would be setting a table three times.
That is the practical reason so many Thornhill and Vaughan households buy quality disposable tableware for this particular holiday rather than washing up between meals. It is not about cutting corners. It is that the window for washing up between Saturday lunch and Saturday dinner is very narrow, and nobody wants to spend it at the sink.
Plan for four settings and buy the packs once. A pack of napkins that covers sixteen settings costs $7.99 and will carry you through the entire weekend.
Layer One: The Table Before Anyone Sits Down
The first layer goes down while the kitchen is still busy, and it is the cheapest part of the whole table. A round plastic table cover is $1.99 and a rectangular one is $2.99, in white or in gold metallic at $4.99.
Start here because everything else sits on top of it and because the cover decides your palette. Gold and white is the safe base for Rosh Hashanah. Pomegranate red and honey amber are the accents, and our table covers come in both a round and a rectangular cut. If you already own a good tablecloth, skip the cover entirely and put the $1.99 toward the centre of the table, which is where it will show.
The other thing that goes down early is confetti, and this is the one decoration people consistently over buy. A single $3.99 pack of gold Star of David confetti scattered thinly down the centre of a table does the entire job. Two packs looks like a bar mitzvah. We sell it in gold, in gold and white, and in blue, and the gold is the one that photographs against a white cover.
Candles are yours to source, since they are lit before the holiday begins and most families use their own. What we do stock is everything that surrounds them.
Layer Two: Apples and Honey, the Centre of Rosh Hashanah Table Decorations
This is the layer worth spending on, because it is the only one every guest will touch. Apples dipped in honey carry the wish for a sweet year, and the vessel that holds the honey is the single most photographed object on a Rosh Hashanah table.
Our glass hexagon honey pot with a wooden dipper is $14.99. It is the piece I recommend most often at the counter, because it comes back out every year and it looks like something rather than like a party supply. Beside it, an apple pot at $4.99 holds the slices. If you would rather have the honey in individual portions, kosher honey jars at 140g are $4.99 each.
Then there are the dippers, which are the detail that makes a table feel set rather than served. Silver honey dippers come four to a pack at $7.99, gold at $7.99, black at $7.99, and a clear lucite single at $4.49. Giving every guest their own dipper solves a real problem, which is eleven people reaching into one honey pot in sequence.
The honeycomb ice cube tray at $6.99 is the one item on this list nobody comes in asking for and everybody buys once they see it. It reads as a small joke about the honey theme and it earns its place on a drinks table.
One setting, four layers. The whole table is this repeated eight times.
Layer Three: The Round Challah and the Seating
Round challah is the second symbol on the table, shaped as a circle for the turn of the year rather than the braid used the rest of it. If you bake, our Rosh Hashanah rolling pin is $13.99 and the Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot cookie cutter set is $12.99 for six shapes, which covers you for the following week as well.
Seating is the part people leave until the guests are in the hallway. Rosh Hashanah is the meal where extended family who do not otherwise sit together are all at one table, and place cards quietly solve that. It is the same problem a seated wedding has at ten times the scale, and our guide to hiring a wedding decorator goes through how the professionals handle it. Honey bee place cards are $4.99 for twelve. There is also a set printed with pomegranate, honey and shofar motifs at $4.99 for twelve.
Here is the piece of table setting most people get wrong. The napkin ring, not the plate, is what makes a setting look designed. Apple shaped rings are $4.99 for ten and pomegranate rings are $4.99 for ten, which is fifty cents a guest for the item that carries the theme at every single seat.
What Are the Simanim, and How Do You Put Them on the Table?
Simanim are the symbolic foods eaten at the start of the Rosh Hashanah meal, each with a short blessing that plays on its name. Apple and honey is the one everybody knows. The fuller set includes pomegranate, dates, leeks, beets, gourd and, in many households, a fish head. My Jewish Learning's overview of Rosh Hashanah is a good primer if this is your first year hosting.
Practice varies a lot, and it varies along community lines rather than by how observant a household is. Sephardi and Mizrahi families often lay a full seder of simanim with each blessing said in turn. Ashkenazi tables more commonly stop at apple, honey and challah, with pomegranate as a frequent addition.
Decorating for the simanim is mostly a serving problem. You need several small dishes on the table at once, at the start of the meal, without the table looking like a buffet. Two things solve it: small matching dishes rather than assorted bowls, and a runner or confetti line down the centre that visually ties the group together.
| Symbol | What it represents | What it needs on the table | Our price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple and honey | A sweet year | Honey pot, dipper, apple dish | $14.99 pot, $7.99 for 4 dippers |
| Round challah | The turn of the year | Board or cloth, honey for dipping | $12.99 cookie cutters, $13.99 rolling pin |
| Pomegranate | Abundance | Small dish, matching napkin ring | $4.99 for 10 rings |
| Dates, leeks, beets | Each has its own blessing | Several small matched dishes | Priced individually in store |
| The seating itself | Family at one table | Place cards | $4.99 for 12 |
If you are hosting a larger crowd and the table is starting to feel like a project rather than a dinner, that is the point at which people call us. Our team builds full setups across the GTA, and a Rosh Hashanah table is a much smaller job than the weddings and milestone parties covered in our event decorations guide.
What Does One Place Setting Actually Look Like?
A complete Rosh Hashanah setting is seven items and costs $11.16 per guest at our shelf prices. Here is every layer, from the charger up.
Party Boutiques shelf prices, Thornhill ON, August 2026. Pack items shown at their per setting cost when the pack is fully used.
- 1Charger plate$3.9913 inch silver brocade, $3.99 each. The layer you can cut first.
- 2Dinner plate$2.0010.25 inch gold plates, $19.99 for 10.
- 3Napkin$0.50Good Yom Tov gold napkins, $7.99 for 16.
- 4Apple napkin ring$0.50$4.99 for 10. Carries the theme at every seat.
- 5Place card$0.42Honey bee place cards, $4.99 for 12.
- 6Rosh Hashanah straw$1.75$6.99 for 4.
- 7Honey dipper$2.00Silver dippers, $7.99 for 4. One per guest.
- Per place setting$11.16
| Position | Item | Cost per setting |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charger plate. 13 inch silver brocade, $3.99 each. The layer you can cut first. | $3.99 |
| 2 | Dinner plate. 10.25 inch gold plates, $19.99 for 10. | $2.00 |
| 3 | Napkin. Good Yom Tov gold napkins, $7.99 for 16. | $0.50 |
| 4 | Apple napkin ring. $4.99 for 10. Carries the theme at every seat. | $0.50 |
| 5 | Place card. Honey bee place cards, $4.99 for 12. | $0.42 |
| 6 | Rosh Hashanah straw. $6.99 for 4. | $1.75 |
| 7 | Honey dipper. Silver dippers, $7.99 for 4. One per guest. | $2.00 |
| Per place setting | $11.16 |
The charger is the honest place to economise. Take it out and the setting drops to $7.17 a guest, and on a white cover with a gold plate almost nobody registers its absence. Keep it if your table is dark wood and you want the plate to lift off it.
What Does a Rosh Hashanah Table Cost in Canada?
Rosh Hashanah table decorations for eight come to $132.79, which is $16.60 a guest, including the shared honey pot and apple pot in the middle. That figure assumes you buy whole packs, because that is what actually happens at the till.
The number that surprises people is what happens at twelve guests.
Twelve is the worst number to host. At eight you fill one table and one set of centrepieces. At twelve you cross onto a second table, buy a second honey pot and a second cover, and then half fill it, so your cost per head climbs to $18.47. By twenty you have spread that second centrepiece across enough guests to bring it back down to $14.83.
There is a practical lesson in that curve. If you are at eleven or twelve guests, either tighten to ten and stay on one table, or accept the second table and invite four more people, because you have already paid for the expensive part. The same logic that governs the budget baskets in our affordable party decorations guide applies here: decorations scale with surfaces, not with headcount.
| Table size | Settings | Centrepieces | Total | Per guest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 guests, 1 table | $99.84 | $32.95 | $132.79 | $16.60 |
| 12 guests, 2 tables | $155.76 | $65.90 | $221.66 | $18.47 |
| 20 guests, 2 tables | $230.62 | $65.90 | $296.52 | $14.83 |
Holiday Table Ideas, Before the Holiday
We send one email a month with what has just landed and what to buy early. Hanukkah stock is next.
Setting the Table Four Times in One Weekend
Because the first day is Shabbat in 2026, you are setting a festive table four times between Friday sundown and Sunday night. Buy for that, not for one dinner.
Two habits make it manageable. First, buy the shared centre once and leave it in place for the whole weekend. The honey pot, the apple pot and the confetti do not need refreshing between meals. Second, vary only the layer guests touch. New napkins and new place cards for the second night cost under $10 and make the Saturday evening table feel like a different meal without a second shop.
The second night carries its own custom. Many households put out a new fruit, something not yet eaten that season, for the shehecheyanu blessing. Pomegranate often serves double duty here, which is why the pomegranate napkin rings are worth having alongside the apple ones.
One more scheduling note that catches people out. Tashlich, the custom of casting crumbs onto flowing water, is traditionally done on the afternoon of the first day, but when that day falls on Shabbat many communities move it to the Sunday. If you are hosting Sunday lunch in the GTA, expect guests to arrive later than you planned, since most groups walk to the water first. The Toronto parks and waterfront listings will tell you which sites are within walking distance of your neighbourhood.
Tips From Our Thornhill Counter
Buy the honey pot in August. Every year the last week before the holiday clears the shelf of the good ones, and what is left is the plainest option. Of all the Rosh Hashanah table decorations we sell, this is the single item people regret rushing.
Do not buy per guest for anything shared. Two honey pots on one table is one honey pot too many. What you want at a long table is one pot within reach of each end, which is a different calculation from one per person.
Count the children separately. The Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot colouring sets are $7.99 and the puffy stickers are $3.99, and at a four meal weekend they buy you more peace than any decoration on the table. Parents who host know this already. First time hosts never think of it.
Skip the balloons. This is the rare celebration where our own balloon wall is the wrong answer, and I say that as someone who works in a shop full of them. Rosh Hashanah is a dinner, not a party, and the room wants candlelight and a set table rather than a focal wall. If you want the full treatment for a milestone instead, our adult birthday party ideas covers that properly.
Four festive meals across one weekend is the real planning problem this year.
Where to Buy Rosh Hashanah Decorations in the GTA
Our store sits on Yonge Street in Thornhill, in a neighbourhood with a long established Jewish community. That is the reason we carry a standing Rosh Hashanah range rather than ordering it in as a seasonal one off, and why there are thirty eight products in the category rather than a shelf of apples. The wider judaica section carries Purim, Passover and Hanukkah alongside it.
Online checkout is switched off across our site at the moment, so everything in this guide is a visit or a phone call rather than a delivery. Call (365) 556-0536 and we will put an order together at the counter for you to collect. We are ten to twenty minutes up or down Yonge from most of the surrounding area, and our install team works across Thornhill, Vaughan and Richmond Hill.
If you are planning further ahead, the same category carries Sukkot the following week and Hanukkah in December, which begins at sundown on Friday December 4 this year. Our guide to Hanukkah decorations across all eight nights works the opposite way to this one, splitting the buy into what goes up once and what changes every evening. Our other seasonal guides work the same way, whether that is a Canada Day table in red and white or the full cultural celebrations section.
Shop at Party Boutiques
We are an independent party supply store on Yonge Street in Thornhill carrying over 5,000 products, and our team has designed more than 200 events across the GTA. If this is your first year hosting, come in and describe the table. That conversation takes five minutes and saves most people about forty dollars of things they were about to buy twice. You can read more about who we are or get in touch before you visit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins at sundown on Friday September 11, 2026 and ends at nightfall on Sunday September 13. The first day falls on Shabbat this year, which means the holiday and Shabbat run together and most households are cooking for four festive meals across one weekend rather than the usual three.
Shana tova is the common greeting and means good year. The fuller version is shana tova umetuka, a good and sweet year, which is where the apples and honey on the table come from. Good yom tov works too, and in the GTA you will hear all three used interchangeably across Ashkenazi and Sephardi households.
Two days in most communities, which is unusual among Jewish holidays because both days are observed in Israel and in the diaspora alike. In 2026 that runs from sundown Friday September 11 through nightfall Sunday September 13. If you are hosting, plan the table for two nights rather than one.
Apples dipped in honey, round challah, and pomegranate are the ones almost every household sets out. Sephardi families often lay a fuller spread of simanim, symbolic foods that include dates, leeks, beets, gourd and a fish head, each with its own short blessing. The decorations follow the food rather than the other way around.
A full place setting with a charger, plate, napkin, apple napkin ring, place card, straw and honey dipper works out to $11.16 per guest at our current Thornhill shelf prices. A complete table for eight, including the shared honey pot and apple pot in the middle, comes to $132.79. Trimming the charger plate takes about $4 per guest off that.
Gold and white are the usual base, with pomegranate red and honey amber as accents. Blue and silver show up in a lot of GTA homes too, carried over from the Star of David palette. The one thing worth avoiding is a busy print, because the table already has apples, honey, challah and pomegranate doing the visual work.