Sort of depends on how realistic you need to be in terms of making the table look lit ONLY by the candles, but if you're trying to create a back-key-fill light on everyone, it sounds like there is some leeway.
It also depends on how close each person will be to each other, like spread far apart at a huge table or bunched together around a smaller table.
And if the table is long or round.
If you can find them (I'm not sure where to look) there are things called "theater candles" which are candles with two wicks in them -- these produce a larger flame that puts out more light, if that's important. It's might not be important though unless you really wanted a lot of real exposure from the actual candles.
But I would probably go with a warm soft top light over the table, skirted on the sides to let the light fall off in intensity and not make the walls look too bright. A simple method for a small round table would be a large Chinese Lantern, perhaps with a 500w photoflood (use a porcelain socket, not a plastic one) on a hand dimmer to darken it and make it warmer. A black skirt of duvetine taped to the ceiling surrounding the Chinese Lantern will flag the light.
For a bigger table, perhaps a couple of Chinese Lanterns in a row, or build a foamcore softbox with a sheet of diffusion at the bottom, and multiple lightbulbs inside, with duvetine skirting, But the soft box idea assumes a way of rigging this to the ceiling, like a solid beam or something.
I wouldn't overdo the backlighting because it can start to intefere with everyone's face as the light crisscrosses the table from all directions. You'd want to use small lights snooted (maybe with blackwrap) to keep the backlight only on the hair of each person (and you'd have to rig these lights somehow around the perimeter of the room. Dedolights, Pepper 150's, are good small lights for this -- they can be spotted in a little.
If the overhead light is soft enough, I wouldn't worry about fill too much, especially if you have a white table cloth to bounce some of the top light back up into their faces. For close-ups, you can use a small light over the lens for the eyes if needed. You can also hang a Chinese Lantern lower to get a softer light on the face for the close-ups -- just be aware of where the candles are because of the hazard if they catch a paper lantern on fire.
You could also rig diffused & gelled Kinoflos over the table instead of Chinese Lanterns or softboxes, but again, you'd have to be able to rig them to the ceiling. A final option would be to bounce some light off of a white card on the ceiling, but it can be hard to then skirt & flag the spill all around the card and yet find an angle to aim the light at it.
If the table has some big set pieces, it may be possible to hide some lightbulbs on the tabletop instead of light from overhead.
For a more stylized look, some people will point an overhead hard spotlight (like a PAR 64) straight down on a white tablecloth, creating an overexposed center to the table, and lighting people by the glow from the table bounce.
