Victorian Christmas Tea

This is the event for which I busted my butt making my recent Natural Form gown – a Victorian Christmas Tea I hosted at our historic Capitol Hill house (built in 1908).

As hostess I didn’t really have a chance to take photos, but a couple of my guests, Gloria of In the Long Run designs (all her photos have her watermark) and Maggie (sans watermark) appear to have well taken care of that for me!

The theme for attire was Victorian but open to any part of the period to make it as easy as possible for people in a heavily 18th century/Regency-oriented region to attend.

The requisite triangle-cut sandwiches, including cucumber, of course!

I tried my hand at making a Victoria Sponge cake:

I had done oodle of baking over the preceding couple weeks:

And got to bring out some of my tea cup collection for the first time since moving to DC!

Possibly the most impressive feature of the house (the colours are even more vibrant in person):

I love this photo that Gloria got of the foyer mantle with the lights of the Christmas tree reflecting in the glass:

The woodwork in this house in amazing!!

And, of course, lots of pics of the pretty ladies!

(check out Jessica’s great 1890s balloon sleeves!)

It seems it was decided that in front of the stairs was a prime spot for taking dress photos

Sarah’s bustle dress was so beautiful, that ruching on her bodice front is exquisite!

Maggie’s lovely 1840s silk plaid dress. Relatively simple looking but so effective; and the slightly diagonal band near the hem was much-admired, a really neat effect!

Susan’s pretty lilac/lavender bustle dress:

Glynnis’ delicious 1870s polonaise – she and Susan came together and looked like ice cream or sherbet! I’m thinking I may need to do a spring Victorian tea just for their dresses!

Gloria was just perfect by the tree in her beautiful red silk early 1880s Natural Form ensemble!

Your’s truly by the tree – photos by the stairs were feature in the post of this dress so I didn’t think I needed to repeat them.

Taylor looking lovely and adorable in her oh-so-pretty 1830s cotton print dress – and that hair!

Next time I do one of these I’ll try to be more on the ball and make sure I get individual photos of everyone and also a group photo – of course I only realized afterwards that my own DSLR and tripod were in one of the bookcases in front us the whole time! I guess I was too busy enjoying the wonderful company and beautiful everyone made the house look! ;o)

Have you been part of any period/costumed holiday events this year? If so, please share!