Well this would depend on the occasion, your space constraints and of course your cooking ability! If you just wanted a social dinner (ie. no special occasion) then I would say 6-8 people is a manageable number and intimate enough for great dinner conversation.
When you start having 10 or more people, you need to consider whether you will be able to cook for so many people on your own, and whether you have enough serving dishes, spoons, crockery, cutlery and of course seating space.
We recommend hiring a professional catering company to come in and cater if you plan to have more than 12 people. The caterers can even drop off pre-prepared meals which you just need to heat up and serve. This will take away a lot of the stress involved in preparing food for so many people!
Remember that cooking for 4 people is very different from cooking for 14 people. So, if you do decide to do all the cooking yourself then you need to plan your recipes carefully in order to make sure that they still taste good in such large quantities and that there will be enough food to go around!
