Great question. I am doing a lot of entertaining these days, so I went to IKEA and loaded up. They had some good bargains in plain white dishes, so I stocked up on those (I serve eighteen to twenty people at a time, so I needed a lot of dishes).
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/ca...t&pageNumber=0
While I was there, I saw lots of really pretty dishes. You might want to check them out.
Fiesta dishes are also really cute and colorful for every day -- very tough.