Afternoon Tea

Last Sunday I went to an afternoon tea at The Merrion with my American Women’s Club of Dublin ladies, and a few ladies from the American Embassy, including the Ambassador’s wife.  Because, you know, why not?  No, this is not something we do every evening, or even every month.  This is a once a year fundraising event, which made it all the more fun.  If we did it all the time it would not have been as exciting.

While many of the ladies in the club are very sharp dressers, I usually am not, and really looked forward to the excuse to get all dressed up.  I had an outfit in mind for months ahead of time, and thank goodness we had unseasonably warm and dry weather that week, because I was going to wear my peep toe sling back satin pumps even it was below freezing and raining!

Photo courtesy of Patrika Mani, Massage Therapist.

In addition to wearing our fancy clothes, we all took the opportunity to wear fancy hats.  Only two of us (myself included) were lucky enough to have a friend (who couldn’t make it to the tea) loan us a hat.  The rest of us all borrowed hats from the Milliner (hat maker) for the event.  We were very lucky to have Sophie Hunter Millinery come to display her wares.  Not only did she bring a huge selection of hats, but she helped us choose which one would work best for us, and how to put them on.   

Photo courtesy of Sophie Hunter Millinery

Photo courtesy of Sophie Hunter Millinery

Turns out the hat I was wearing (the borrowed one) was both on backwards, and designed for a part on the other side of the head.  Who knew?  Even though I was super happy to have a hat already, I still tried on another one, which was amazing.  I wore it around for a bit but then gave it back because the last few ladies in the door had slim pickings, and I wanted to give them a chance to wear the awesome hat as well. 

This was the hat on backwards, but I still kind of liked it like that.

This is what it's supposed to look like,but it looked much better in person.

This borrowed hat was awesome, and the center a much darker yellow than shows here.  The other hat does make it easier to chat with the people on my left though.

When Sophie first laid out all her hats, I thought they were interesting, but there were only a couple on the table I was really drawn to.  She had a huge selection, and so of course, they weren’t all going to be my cup of tea.  That is, until she stared putting them on us.  I was amazed at how well she paired them with the wearer, and how the colors of some of them matched perfect with the outfits!  She obviously knows what she’s doing, and how to a make us look fab.  Okay, I know I’m going on quite a bit about these hats, but honestly, it was my favorite part!  I think I’m not the only one, we all spent a lot of time checking each other out and taking pictures.

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Look at how well those red and purple hats matched the outfits.  Those were ones loaned at the event, but Sophie could not have done any better if she had planned this in advance!  Photo courtesy of Sophie Hunter Millinery.

Once we finally got all dolled up and sat down, we got our fancy pants trays of goodies.  I found out that there are two different types of teas: and Afternoon Tea and a High Tea.  An afternoon tea has finger sandwiches and pastries, a High Tea is more like a full meal.  There’s probably more to it than that, but for our purposes that’s good enough.  We had lots of little finger sandwiches and pastries, so this was an Afternoon tea.  

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

At first we were all trying to figure out how to divide up the snacks, since there wasn’t enough on the table for us each to have one of everything, but we quickly found out that they would refill the trays.  They weren’t skimping on the food here, they actually ended up taking food away at the end because we were too full to finish everything they brought us.  

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Photo courtesy of scruplesnoregrets.com

Then they brought out the “art dessert.”  We each got our own individual plate of desserts that looked like little pieces of art, but none of us could figure out quite what they were supposed to be.  Once we were all thoroughly confused, the server brought out some little playing card sized pictures of the art work which inspired the treats, as well as a short description.  One was called “Frying pan, fennel, eggs & lemons.”  I was really hoping this was not also the flavor inspiration.   It wasn’t, by the way, it was a yummy citrus flavor.  Once we had an image of the original artwork, we could see what they were doing with the desserts and appreciate them a little more.  Then we dove in.  The best was the chocolate one, yum!

We weren’t quite done yet, though.  Remember this was a fundraising event.  First we had the CEO of our charity, Ruhama, give us a little talk about the charity.  The quick description, taken from their website, is:  “Our services are comprehensive to meet the broad range of experiences of women affected by prostitution.  We provide a service to women who are currently involved in on-street and off-street prostitution; women who are exiting prostitution; women who are victims of sex trafficking; and women who have a history of prostitution.”  She gave some quick examples of how some of the women they helped were tricked into sex trafficking, then also some success stories of ladies they helped.  It did damper the mood a bit, but it was a good reminder of what we were there for.

Then we did the drawing for the raffle, which got us perked up again. There was quite a selection of prizes, mostly gift certificates (vouchers if you’re Irish), including one from my friend TheYankee Baker.  Some women were very lucky, not only winning multiple prizes, but also winning one of the two prizes hidden on the bottom side of our chairs.  Don’t get me wrong, no one was greedy, most people would say they’d won enough and to draw for someone else, but we had a lot of prizes and a small group.  Between the event price and the raffle, we raised €925, a pretty impressive number for only 50 ladies!

I think we were there for two hours, but time sure flew by while we chatted and snacked, and soon enough a good time had to come to an end.  I’m already looking forward to next year!