Good Job on your first attempt. As stated before the lighting is pretty poor. It looks like you have a single spotlight illuminating the entire scene?

Try using ambient lights on each candle set the colour to a light orange and turn on raytrace shadows foreach one to see if you get the right effect from the shadowing. Also keep the spot, but widen the cone area and and turn down its intensity and do not use shadows.

For me the biggest problem is light not falling on the table, the first place light would hit would be the table.