The host who handles an accident calmly protects the guest’s memory of the whole evening.

A guest who breaks something is not thinking about the object, they are thinking about whether the evening is now their fault. Whatever the host does in the next ten seconds settles that, often permanently. A calm response lets the incident stay small and the evening remain what it was. A visible flinch or a long clean-up turns four hours into one moment they will remember with embarrassment.

Move first and speak lightly: it does not matter, sit down, let me get a cloth. Do not assess the damage in front of them, and do not tell the story later.