I don't just use the dining room for special occasions, it is used every day.
I would say, however, that if given only two choices...one being a house with a too -small dining room, and the other an open-plan with more than adequate space for a table for twelve...I would choose the open plan, assuming it wasn't really right AT the kitchen.
I don't personally care for eating counters or pass-throughs to dining rooms, and have rejected houses based on them.

Here in Florida, it seems we are supposed to do nothing but eat! Almost every home we viewed had multiple, separate and unique places to dine, formal dining room, breakfast nook, island or peninsula, lanai, pool deck, outdoor island or peninsula. Most of the houses had dining furniture, tables and chairs, or stools in each area. One model had 8 places to eat! Yowsa! The home we bought has 3 with the space for one more. So breakfast in the nook, lunch on the pool deck, dinner in the dining room!

We use the dining room every day, it's informal with a mid century table and chairs. !930's houses were built to eat in the dining room and cook in a small kitchen.

We don't use ours much, so I think I'm going to do away with it, and expand the kitchen. We are casual when we entertain, and people tend to hang out in our small kitchen.

I have both a family dining room and a formal dining room. It is a must in our home.

Like momo5x, a formal dining room is a must in our house too. We have a large extended family and our house is the gathering spot. Plus, I LOVE setting a fancy table for special occasions - or occasions that aren't particularly special but I feel like MAKING special. We use our formal dining room at least once a month, often more than once a month. Here it is, all decked out for Thanksgiving this past year, with my grandmother's china and handmade lace runner from Belgium.

I'm a believer in the small house idea, though I'm not able to follow it as much in practice as I would like. I want to plan a house for the way I live most of the time, not for the 1/30th of the year that I use a space (let's say you use the dining room once a month). In the retirement house that we just built, we have one separate eating area, with a table that expands to fit the extended family. We also have stools at our island, but they're more for hanging out with the cook than they are for eating a meal.

First we had a dining room, then we called it the rumpus room (because the dog liked to play there). Now we call it the "dumpus room" because that is the staging area for packing for a move, to a home that will NOT have a dining room! Everything is dumped in the dumpus room!

For me, I love the look of a beautiful formal dining room, but choose the open floor plan. Being the hostess I find guests still love to gravitate to the kitchen/cooking area so I like the open concept where you can be with everyone. I believe the formal dining room is going the way of the formal living room.

I am actually getting ready to renovate my kitchen and we are knocking out a wall to open up the room and on that wall we are adding a breakfast bar of sorts. Plus we use the dining room on a daily basis but sometimes it is just more convenient with a busy schedule to just have a quick place to sit and gobble up some grub without having to worry about messing up the table in the process.

I still like both. I don't want my guests seeing the mess in the kitchen while I'm cooking. I like my eat in kitchen. But perfer formal dinning for guests

crystalandroses, I agree. I mean, if I had to choose one OR the other - either a big eat in kitchen OR a tiny space with a larger formal dining room, I'd choose the big eat in kitchen. But I want (and have) both. Both are important to me. In fact, we use our formal dining room on a regular basis. The formal dining room is just through an archway from the kitchen with a straight line view through the kitchen, across the island (with it's seating) and to the kitchen table which seats four, so when we have large groups over, no one feels isolated - not the cook, not the people gathered in the kitchen, and not those lounging around the dining room table. Someone can be in the formal dining room and speak in a normal voice and whoever is in the kitchen can hear (and see) them easily if they're engaged in a conversation.