Staying up to watch the Royal Wedding?

The Mall, London, England.  Wikimedia Commons.

San Jose area residents are full of excitement over Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding, which represents a love story, even a fairy tale, to many people.   While Californians won’t be getting the day off tomorrow like those in the UK will, there’s nothing preventing us from enjoying the event with our own celebrations.  Many in the Bay Area will be staying up tonight to watch the pre-wedding programs, as well as the wedding itself.  There will even be a sort of play-by-play on the official YouTube channel.  Most local networks will be starting their coverage at 4 a.m. Eastern time, which will be around 2 a.m. Pacific time, so the countdown has begun!  It also looks like local pubs and some restaurants will be opening early for breakfast so that people can come in and watch. 

My version of a Royal favorite: Chocolate Biscuit Cake.

Chocolate Biscuit Cake.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

For the South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild's Royal Wedding Tea, I made one of the dishes that is reported to be on the menu for the upcoming wedding: Chocolate Biscuit Cake.  The recipe was originally taken from Chef McGrady's cookbook, Eating Royally, and is supposed to be the one favored by the British Royals when McGrady was chef to Princess Diana and her sons.  It was posted on the Internet, and this is the variation I used:

Chocolate Biscuit Cake:
1 package McVitie's Plain Digestive Biscuits
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3.5 oz. milk chocolate (I used a bar of Cadbury's), plus 1/4 up dark chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
1 egg, beaten

Would you like to attend a Royal Wedding Tea Party?

William and Kate .  Photo: Alexandre Goulet,  Creative Commons 3.0.

Join the South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild for our own celebration of the wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton!  With all the media attention, there is a lot of information available about the wedding details, including some of the menu choices.  Let's dress up as wedding guests from 1800 through 2011 (the upcoming wedding dress code is morning dress with hats for men, garden party dresses and hats for women), and enjoy an English tea while looking at some books about the British Royal Family and my grandmother's wedding dress.  If the weather's nice, we can sit in the garden! 

The Royal Wedding Tea: We’ll have an afternoon tea featuring some of the foods that Prince William and Kate Middleton have ordered for their wedding festivities, as well as take a look at my grandmother’s wedding dress from 1945. Gentlemen and older children welcome!

    Date: Saturday, April 16, 2011, 2 p.m.
    Location: a private home in San Jose, CA. 
    Cost: $25 (Guild members)/ $30 (non-members)
    Suggested Costume: day dress from 1800 through the 1940s, or “garden party” dress. 

As always, please R.S.V.P. and send food fees by Thursday, April 14 to enable planning and food preparation.  Payment can be made (in person) by cash, or check, or PayPal. E-mail the South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild for more information.  Hope to see you there!  

Planning a Royal Wedding tea party!

Rosolia Caccomo LoBue's wedding dress ca. 1945.

England’s Prince William of Wales will marry Kate Middleton on April 29, 2011.  What better way to watch the festivities than with a party, more specifically a tea party?  Since the wedding will occur in the wee hours of the morning (Pacific time), you may want to have a high tea the evening before while watching some of the pre-wedding TV specials, and then watch the wedding replay in the morning, or record it live, and play it for the guests in the afternoon.  Everyone can get dressed up in their nicest garden party dress (suits with morning coats for the men) and hats, and enjoy an English-style tea in front of the television.

Another Victorian spring activity: making potpourri.

Violets.  Photo: Nikolay Dimitrov.

This is from the February 1860 issue of Godey's Lady's Book:

"A pot pourri, as it is called, if properly made up, forms an elegant and beautiful perfume, though it costs some months to complete.  You should begin it while the violets are in bloom, as they add greatly to its excellence.  There are, however, plenty of flowers that are available.  Get a china jar four or six inches deep, with cover.  Prepare layers of damask and other sweet-scented rose-leaves and buds, also layers of orange-flowers, if you can obtain them, jessamine, lavender-flowers, clove-pinks, sweet-scented stocks, marjoram, orange-mint, lemon-thyme, balm of Gilead, and rosemary.  Have some orris-root sliced, and the outer part of the rind of Seville oranges.  Have also a few cloves reduced to powder, and small quantities of benjamin, storax, and musk, and some bay salt, all in fine powder.  Mix the powders and the salt well together; then put a layer of leaves, as you collect them, into your jar, sprinkling each layer with a portion of the powders, and so proceed till your jar is nearly full;  stir all together now and then, press firmly down, and cover close.  When the cover is taken off in a warm room, a very agreeable scent will be diffused." 

Carnations, or Clove-pinks.

Time-travel with a Jules Verne Steampunk Tea!

A samovar fits the steampunk aesthetic!

Santa Clara will play host to a time-traveling fantasy world this weekend, with the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition at the Hyatt Regency.  Why not take your tea travels in a whole new direction with historically-inspired fantasy?  Jules Verne was the original science fiction author, who wrote a collection of novels during the 19th century featuring hot-air balloons, airplanes, dirigibles, and other cutting-edge technology of the Victorian era, with speculations about how these gadgets would affect the world.  The Silicon Valley is one major result of ideas like his, and it can be a lot of fun to combine Victorian aesthetics with modern technology in your home decor, or even just in a really great tea party. 

A springtime Victorian craft: lavender "bottles".

The Victorians are known to have been lovers of nature and flowers, as well as decorative handicrafts.  Seasonal crafts for spring often included natural elements like fresh flowers, leaves, ferns, as well as twigs and other found objects from the woods and gardens.  Pressed flowers, growing ferns and greenery in terrariums, and making potpourri are some of the crafts mentioned over and over in 19th century magazines, but a slightly less common one involves weaving lavender stems and flowers into "bottles" or "wands".  This is a slightly time-consuming project, but it's a good one for a rainy afternoon or when you're sick in bed for the day.