How to Plan an Alice in Wonderland Tea Party with Themed Food, Drinks, Decorations & Activities

[Music] hi welcome to the storytellers cottage where we bring literature to life today i'm going to show you how to host an immersive alice in wonderland tea party using all the secrets that i've learned from my years of building real life events based on my favorite books and stories the key to creating a really engaging immersive event is world building some of you may be familiar with the term in relation to writing but i'm using it in a slightly different way world building can refer to dreaming up a fantasy world and then writing a story set in it but in our case what i'm describing is essentially replicating the most evocative elements of a literary setting so that the guests at my event feel as though they've fallen through the rabbit hole so to speak and landed inside the actual book now obviously when you're working within the limits of your home or a borrowed space you won't be able to build the same kind of immersive experience that say disney could since they're not only building something from scratch they're working with an almost unlimited budget we wish what i'm going to show you is how to use what you have to create an experience that is suggestive enough of a well-known place that your guests can easily use their imaginations to fill in the rest for example if i set up an alice in wonderland tea party with coffee cups that have computer logos on them and pizza for the snacks it's going to be pretty hard for the guests to mentally get into the alice zone but if i find a place where i can take out or cover up some of the elements that might disturb our willing suspension of disbelief and i add in a few really iconic items that say alice in wonderland to anyone who's a fan and my event is going to be not just fun but really memorable throwing this type of party is partly a love letter to a favorite story and also partly a sort of gift to your guests you're offering them a really unique opportunity to spend a few hours away from the real world in a place that's been enchanted into being built out of these warm elements of happiness and optimism and cordiality and delight it feels great to share that kind of allied fellowship so today we're going to talk about four things the world the food the activities and the optional dress-up elements so let's start by building the world what belongs in an alice in wonderland space close your eyes and think for a minute about the images that come to mind when you think alice in wonderland there's her blue dress and her white headband the mad hatter with his funny hat with the price tag on it the white rabbit with the big watch the queen of hearts those carved soldiers the teapot with a mouse in it that caterpillar smoking on the toadstool and of course the cheshire cat now more generally you're probably also imagining a sort of springtime setting with grass and trees and flowers and a lot of green with pastels now hold on to that let's talk about your setting you don't need a fancy dining room or a special room at all just choose a space that lends itself best to the size of your party and your color scheme you can move furniture to make space near a window and set up some folding tables covered with pretty tablecloths then carry over all your houseplants to create that garden effect you can pick a spot near some floral curtains or near some shelves where you can display a bunch of teacups or you can even set up outside if the weather is cooperating the most important thing is to choose a spot where you have room to set up your iconic elements and there aren't too many non-alice distractions you may be thinking oh no i don't have any alice in wonderland decorations i'm going to have to go out and buy all kinds of stuff no stop right there before you start spending money take a tour of your house this is actually going to be more of a treasure hunt than a tour take a look around with a prop masters eye for things that give you that same alice feeling you may not have the exact card soldiers from the story but i bet you have a deck of cards and you may not have the white rabbit but i'm sure you can come up with some kind of bunny whether it's a garden ornament or a stuffed animal and don't feel like you need the exact pocket watch that he carries around grab some clocks when you put them all together you'll start to see this is a world emerging from my little pile of things when i put together some of these iconic things with some generic stuff like flowers and springtime colors i'm really starting to get a serious alice in wonderland vibe here it's working so pull together all the props you have pile them up and then take stock what's missing what one or two images would pull this all together for you here's what i did i've got my rabbit my clocks some nice floral items that really say spring and just as an aside i am cheating a little bit because i do collect teacups so i have a bit of an advantage for this particular theme but honestly if you feel like you might be throwing a few more tea parties in the future it is worth taking a trip to the thrift shop to pick up a few teacups to have on hand because they really bring the charm to the party you see just like this one other thing you'll need to brainstorm about is your serving pieces if you don't have these adorable traditional tiered plates you can actually make them by turning a teacup upside down and placing a plate on it then just grab as many different pastel colored plates and bowls as you can find and the eclectic combination will underscore the springtime whimsy of your theme now this being a tea party the food and drinks are really the centerpiece of this party a traditional tea party generally has three courses your scones with some kind of cream and jelly your little tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off and your sweets now you can bake everything from scratch but that's hard so tea parties really do lend themselves to modifying items that you can get at your local grocery store you can buy scones if your local store doesn't have clotted cream like they do in england you can use creme fresh or even cream cheese and then the sandwiches are actually quite simple to make especially if you start with deli salads some of my favorites are ham salad and i'll let you in on a little secret if you buy ready-made chicken salad from the deli and add some curry and some raisins mix that up and you've got something really delicious that's called coronation chicken salad it's always a hit choose bread that has a very tight crumb to it make the whole sandwich cut off the sides cut them on the diagonal so you get little triangles and then assuming you're making these ahead of time which you should wrap them up really well and stick them in the fridge sandwiches get dry super fast then the desserts are the fun part go crazy with any tiny cute mini things that you can find in the grocery store bakery those little one bite brownies petty fours which you can sometimes find around the holidays my local store makes these amazing oreo cake balls that everybody goes bananas for and sometimes you can even find cute little tarts those are hard to make so that's an ideal thing to let your grocery store baker handle for you so now you have all the food that you need the secret to throwing a party that runs really smoothly is to have everything prepared ahead of time and every detail thought through before the guests arrive so that you never run into the situation where you say we're gonna need some sugar or we didn't even occur to me what to do with the tea bags when they take them out of the teacups sit down and think through exactly how the party is going to run and what things you're going to need to have out there so that the guests never have to ask you for anything so for example will you be using tea bags or are you going to steep the tea in a teapot how do you plan to keep the water hot how will you dispose of those bags you might want to have a little dish off to the side specifically for that purpose what's going on the table obviously in a tea party setting if you've got a great tablecloth start with that whether it's floral or maybe it's green so it sort of gives you this grass type background feeling the whimsical alice in wonderland theme lends itself perfectly to mismatched dishes and teacups and if you can get a hold of cloth napkins that's fantastic or just get some really cute paper ones maybe they have the alice in wonderland graphics on them think through the obvious stuff i need a plate for everybody a teacup for everybody a spoon for each person we're going to need sugar milk lemon sugar substitute and your guests will be really happy if you think about potential allergens ahead of time too maybe you need to have a few gluten-free options or sugar-free options whatever you can think of ahead of time to be prepared for organize all that before the party starts so that during the party everyone is amazed at how smoothly it's running now depending on your particular guests you might like to plan an activity or two in addition to eating for example if you're throwing this party for your mom's birthday and all your guests are family members who really are just interested in catching up then you may be better off skipping the reindeer games and letting the conversation flow naturally but maybe you're hosting a group of young girls whose attention spans are a little shorter this is the situation where maybe you want to plan a craft to keep them busy or maybe your guests are all your millennial friends and in that case you might want to add a trivia game with prizes just to stretch out the fun here's where the internet comes in extremely handy take a quick stroll through pinterest to see what kinds of crafts other people have done that have alice in wonderland themes look around and see what you might have for craft supplies to make this again more affordable for you and consider making things that the guests can take home with them maybe a little bottle that says drink me or maybe they're even painting a teacup or a plate or something adorable like that and by the same token the trivia game also can be put together fairly easily using trivia questions and facts that you can find online now don't forget you can customize your party any way you want to maybe you don't want a typical alice in wonderland theme that's based on springtime maybe you want a haunted atlas party and that's actually fairly simple to achieve just by changing the colors of your table setting go with black plates and an orange teapot and throw in some typically halloween type decor like spider webs and little plastic spider rings and maybe a few odd bones here and there and again this is your party it can look any way you want it to look you can go heavy on the books let's say and cover the whole place in old books and illustrations printed on pages from old books and give out books as favors or even incorporate passages from the original book into your trivia game and that brings us to the last element of your party which is the optional dress up you yourself can dress up you can ask your guests to dress up you can ask them to wear authentic alice type costuming or you can just go with generic tea dresses wear something floral wear a dress wear a hat wear gloves anything you think you and your friends would enjoy adding the extra element of dress up really brings the event into the realm of fantasy it really makes everyone feel as though they're slipping into another world and essentially that's the fun part of any kind of immersive event so many of us read or watch movies or listen to storytelling so we can mentally travel to another place or immerse ourselves in another world and this being 2020 our current world is a place from which a lot of people would like to escape so providing an opportunity for them to become someone else for a little while maybe someone who doesn't have the cares of real life on their shoulders is a great way to spread joy happiness positive vibes all that great stuff and alice in wonderland in particular is a great way to start hosting immersive events because it's so iconic it's whimsical it's fairly easy to achieve you can make it happen with things that you find around your house and alice in wonderland makes people happy you're very likely to get extremely enthusiastic responses to your invitation to join you in wonderland so have fun planning your party let me know in the comments how it went and if there's anything else that you added to your party that i didn't mention here that could help somebody else improve theirs thanks for watching

Channel: The Storyteller's Cottage

Views: 27,367

Keywords: alice in wonderland, tea party, immersive event, how to throw a tea party, how to throw an alice in wonderland party, tea party tips, cottagecore, teacore, light academia, cottagecore party, cottagecore aesthetic, party planning, event planning

Id: KLDAr4vhAhg

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020