I would never say I feel 100 % confident with hosting a party with more than 4 guests coming. To be frank, sometimes I felt stressed if I need to prepare a meal for more than 3. I only started to gain such kind of experience since a couple of years ago. I prefer to have no more than 2 guests at home at a time. It’s lovely, you know, having a chat, not to worry the number of dishes and guests feeling hungry and not satisfied at the end of the day. 3 guests can be a little pressure because usually if there are 3 guests, they must come from different background, and have different preference of food. It’s very hard to organize and coordinate the glasses, cups, bowls, plates and their personal interests. To make everybody feel happy, there are too many details you need to pay attention and also find out an effective way to treat your guest, like a real balanced menu on the dinner table, or divide the whole thing into several big sections (afternoon snacks, main course, after meal fruit or ice-cream) which help to build a bit rhythm on your varieties and meet guests’ needs .
Normally if I have to prepare a dinner for more than 4, I would start 2 or 3 hours earlier. I was just too worried. Be honest, it shouldn’t be like that. With the most recent dinner which happened this evening, I noticed that I have improved a lot. It still took me 2-3 hours to get all dishes on the table, but it was more relaxing and organized.
There are some tips I learned from where I came from:
1) Try to get everybody involved but not to seem too rude: If you host a meal for 8 people for the first time, make sure you choose hot pot, dumplings or buffet instead of making 9 Chinese courses all by yourself.
2) Try to make 4 very big dishes instead of making 8 small dishes, and make sure that big 4 dishes having enough meat contained (not applicable for vegetarians 
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3) If you can’t get people to involve in your preperation, you’d better think through and figure out some easy dishes, something you don’t need to use stove or stir fry for a long time, like salad, cold dishes, some easy western styled food that you can cook in the oven.
4) Always prepare a big stew for the dinner table if there are more than 4 persons. Stew can be prepared one day ahead and it’s always satisfying and opening people’s appetite. It looks so grand and rich in taste that people would be amazed and appreciate your cooking skills.
5) Get a couple of hot dishes ready to be cooked, but leave them aside until the half-way of the dinner, when people feel a bit warmed up and had eaten half of food, then it will be the time to get the hot and freshly made dishes onto the table.
