Courtney from Pizzazzerie recently styled an AMAZING Vampire-themed dinner party for a Nashville Lifestyles piece… how gorgeous is this?!

The shoot was inspired by Love at First Bite: The Complete Vampire Lover’s Cookbook, which boasts “more than 300 suckulent recipes” {very clever!}. I love this idea for a clever twist on Halloween celebrations… or a fun excuse to celebrate your favorite vampire themed books, movies, or tv shows (and there seem to be, oh… 1 or 2 of those!).

Read on for more hauntingly beautiful images and all the creative details, as explained by Courtney…

“When the publisher of Nashville Lifestyles magazine showed me “Love at First Bite: The Complete Vampire Lover’s Cookbook” in her office one day, we both knew it would make a fabulous feature for their October issue.

I got started right away pulling together all things black, red, and antique silver. We wanted to avoid anything too “Halloweeny” and tried to focus on chic and dark. The house we shot in had black ceilings, which really added to the dark and spooky atmosphere.

I used black velvet fabric as the table cover, topped with antique candelabras and tall red candle sticks. Candles were a main element of the table to add a spooky glow. To make the red dripped candles, I dripped a red candle on top of a white candle – and done! Placing mirrors down the center of the table created a ghastly reflection and a steady base for our candle sticks.

Using the Vampire Lovers’ Cookbook as my inspiration, I designed menus for each table setting including “Steak Through the Heart” and “Devil Hair Pasta“.

Our local Whole Foods has an amazing pastry chef who created some simple chocolate ganache mini cupcakes topped with red “blood drops”.

Then I used Martha Stewart’s Vampire Wine Labels to adorn bottles of red wine.

Another fun trick is to buy Halloween Drink Color Dye and use it to color your cocktails black or red. We did this with a Vampire Blood Cocktail in my vintage champagne flutes (see image #2, above), and it was a super easy way to give the cocktails a Vampire-appropriate look!”