Pinkies up at high tea for Harry and Meghan
A dozen colorful fascinators adorned the coiffed heads of giddy women in a dark Union Square hotel lobby, each eagerly awaiting Saturday’s Royal Wedding Tea Party at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Some even wore full-blown flowered and feathered church hats, and a handful of little girls in pastel dresses danced in place, counting the minutes for tea service to begin. American actress Meghan Markle had become Her Royal Highness Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, hours earlier, but in San Francisco, some royal enthusiasts postponed their celebration until a more civilized Pacific Standard Tea Time.
The Crown & Crumpet tea shop hosted the day’s three ticketed tea parties where guests, for $125 each, were treated to three hours of high tea, finger sandwiches and scones, raffles and door prizes, photo booths and a fascinator-making station, and select video highlights of the royal wedding, all in a private ballroom just off the hotel’s lobby bar. Portraits of Markle and Prince Harry adorned British flags at either end of the ballroom, two projection screens displayed gasp-worthy wedding moments, full-size cardboard wedding cake centerpieces were drenched in glitter and topped with toysize red London phone booths, and an army of Crown & Crumpet’s “trolley dollies” passed out a selection of eight teas, sweets and treats.
I attended the middle offering of a 12:30 p.m. tea time — it had sold out long before the 9:30 a.m. and the 3:30 p.m. teas, but according to Crown & Crumpet’s Amy Dean, all three tea services were well-attended successes. Dean began planning a royal wedding event in November, and made a trip to London this year to stock up on Harry and Meghan tchotchkes.
Dean, who owns Crown & Crumpet with her husband, Chris, even went so far as to employ the United States’ only toastmaster to kick off the event with an official toast to the royal couple. “It’s experiences you wanna pay for, not crap,” explained Dean of her fancy wedding watching tea. “With us, you get both!”
Indeed, the giveaways at this formal tea were hearty. Each of us took away gift bags filled with British chocolates and Meghan and Harry key chains. A raffle, the proceeds of which went to the Presidio’s Green Light Clinic, raised money for the mental health services nonprofit and scored lucky guests such prizes as a Links of London bracelet or one night’s stay at the Sir Francis Drake.
While Dean and her team hosted a smaller scale event for Prince William and Duchess Kate’s wedding in 2011, it was Markle who inspired this event’s large and enthusiastic production.
“We really love that fact that she’s an American, that she’s of mixed race — because my daughter’s mixed race,” said Dean. “It seems like Meghan Markle will do a lot more than just look pretty.”
Indeed she may already have. I was seated at Table 9 with a collection of women and one dutiful husband who were delighted to dress up and treat themselves to high tea in Markle’s honor. To my left, 27-year-old Ashleigh Titre of Sunnyvale explained that she was particularly inspired by Markle. As a woman of mixed race, Titre is about to marry into a traditional Asian family. The engagement of Harry and Meghan — and the royal family’s apparent embrace of Markle’s heritage — helped pave the way for Titre’s own entry into a new family.
Throughout tea, Dean played the energetic and often irreverent hostess. She is really half the reason to attend any Crown & Crumpet event. The small business-owning mom fluttered from table to table like a butterfly, keeping all 100 guests happy and laughing. A lover of all things British (she strikes me as a lover of all things, period), Dean would occasionally pop into a fun English accent, guiding us through our afternoon and passing out boxes of British tea to anyone who had to wait a little too long for their scones. Dean had already played through this routine at 9:30 a.m., and she’d do it again in the afternoon.
The highlight of our tea service, other than the abundance of tea and food tasting opportunities in a glitzy gilded ballroom, was the royal wedding video footage. At one point, the camera panned to Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, as she sat beautifully alone and proud at St. George’s Church, surrounded by royals and celebrities. Our ballroom of Americans gasped, fell to silence and then broke into applause. We watched our dreamy fairy tale — pinkies raised, all smiles, scones and watery eyes.
The highlight of our tea service was the royal wedding video footage.