"Esto es una cena formal."
Translation:This is a formal dinner.
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"Esto" is like saying "this situation". For example, when you say "esta comida está bien preparada" [this food is well cooked], you can replace the phrase that makes the situation explicit (esta comida) and put the word "esto" instead to refer to "it" as an implicit situation. The implicit phrase would be "esto está bien preparado". Notice how the gender of the adjective changes since "esto" is a masculine pronoun, which ends up changing the gender of the "it" that is being described.
Everything has a gender in spanish. The only things for which we use neuter words are the abstract concepts such as "the profound [lo profundo], the good [lo bueno], the known [lo conocido], but even then you would still, by intuition, associate them with the masculine gender for the substantive "lo" and for the "o" at the end of those words.
I was going by the following, from http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/demonstratives.htm
"Each demonstrative pronoun also has a neuter form. They do not change for number or gender, and they are used to refer to abstract ideas, or to an unknown object.
- esto (this matter, this thing)
- eso (that matter, that thing)
- aquello (that matter/thing over there)"