Mad Hatter's Tea Party

The DFWCG folk are rather fond of their tea parties.  Since 2009 the guild has hosted at least one tea per year whether in someone's home or in one of the various tea houses in the DFW area.  Guild participants have become so fond of their tea parties, in fact, that this year we decided to schedule two of them.

This first tea of 2012 was themed Mad Hatter's Tea Party and was held at Mitra's Tea Room in Hurst.  Costumes and grand hats were encouraged, but the only real rule for attendance was that each attendee be wearing some sort of hat.  Small, Large, gregarious, or modest, all kinds of hats were represented at our tea party.  

 Here is a partial group shot that shows the range of historical hats in attendance.  And there were also a couple Sci-Fi hats in attendance.  Lisa brought two hats as well as her sonic screwdriver!

We had an honored out of town guest for this tea.  Maggie of Padawansguide and CostumersGuide was visiting and decided to join us.  It was wonderful to host her as reading about many of the 18th century and Regency events she has attended in her home state are the inspiration for our own.  Plus, her costume guides have been a big help to several of us looking for research.  It was so nice to meet her in person.

The afternoon tea menu was lovely.  Mitra's serves a proper cup of tea steeped in individual small tea pots as opposed to bringing out hot water tea pots and tea bags to steep in the cup.

We were so delighted with each course that we forgot to take pictures of most of it until after we dug in.  Oops!  These scones and muffins were great as was the cream that came with them.  There was also a strawberry butter and a lemon cream that's not pictured.  Both were lovely compliments.

Their chicken salad sandwiches, shown here in the round whole wheat bread, were absolutely wonderful as were their cucumber sandwiches, which got gobbled up before a picture was taken.  I didn't have an egg salad sandwich, but they were all gone too, so I believe they were good also.

Our fearless leader, Jen, surprised us with some games to play as we waited between each course.  First we played a guess the hat game.  You can see that one in the picture of the sandwiches above.  Then we played a game where we named as many hat names or types as we could think of.

Here we are all thinking very very hard to list as many hat types as we could in 5 minutes.

And here the winner of the game, Ginger, compares notes with Maggie who just barely missed the win by one hat.  There was actually a tie, then a sudden death round where Ginger came up with one more hat and Maggie accepted defeat.

After the tea we all decided to head down to a local park for some nice photographs in our costumes and hats.  But Beth couldn't go, so we made sure to capture her lovely bustle ensemble at the tea room.

And of course there is the obligatory group shoe shot.

It's so much fun when we can get together in a park setting and finally photograph the clothing we've worked so hard on.   Jen took photographs of each of us in turn so we have new pictures to add to our scrapbooks and portfolios.  Everyone looked so lovely!

Jen sporting her lovely Regency wear.  I wish some of the details in the Spencer showed up better, like her lovely silk lining.

This is an outfit that several of us read about on Maggie's blog.  It was just as beautiful up close as it is in pictures.

Arranging the train and shaking out the train were common occurrences with Christy's lovely dress.  It takes a village for a perfect shot.

But look how beautiful it is!

We all oohed and ahhed over Ginger's lovely fur muff accessory.

Cynthia has been working on her 18th century garb for quite some time now.  She hand sewed a great majority of it.  Her results photographed beautifully!

Maggie's Tudor fitted gown and kirtle are part of several projects she's been working on for a couple of years via The Tudor Tailor.

Christopher and Lisa were sporting their Sci-Fi gear.  Who doesn't love crazy fun hats like that?

Lisa's 2nd hat, the tardis beanie!

Our 3 Regency ladies.

The adorable couple.

And finally here we are together as a group.

We laughed a lot told funny stories and played games.  It truly was a wonderful day.  And just think, our next tea is just right around the corner.  If you'd like to join in on our tea party fun, plan to come to our Steampunk Tea Party in March at the Heritage Farmstead Museum in Plano.  Remember, you are not required to be in costume for our events, you can just come to chat and play games with us as well.  We hope to see you then!