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Updated Mar 06, 2025How to Host the Loveliest Tea Party Wedding
Pinkies up!
Photo: Catherine Falls Commercial | GettyImages
There's no rule that says weddings can only happen in the evening. A tea party wedding is a lovely alternative to your conventional ceremony and reception. Rather than meet friends on the dance floor, gather around towers of sandwiches and sweets, sipping on tea, and toasting to your next chapter with your pinkies up.
And a tea-party-themed wedding is shockingly versatile. If you love Bridgerton, you can run with a royally inspired, ornate theme. Alice in Wonderland fans can go for bold and unconventional decor. Of course, there's always the classic vintage-inspired tea party that involves a collection of mismatched teacups and decor that your five-year-old self would have gone crazy for.
If these ideas resonate with your wedding vision, and you can picture yourself celebrating with an afternoon tea party wedding filled with dainty florals, delicate teacups, and swoon-worthy pastries, then it's time to start planning a daytime celebration you won't soon forget. Here's how the experts plan the prettiest tea party wedding.
In this article:
How to Plan a Tea Party Wedding
Planning your big day around a wedding theme can make it easier to focus on the details and decor. It provides a roadmap for selecting your ideal venue or choosing the perfect flowers, and a tea party wedding theme sets the stage for a charming celebration that focuses on special details and sweet moments.
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"A tea party wedding is a great idea for a smaller, more intimate wedding—a daytime wedding or an encore wedding," says Gilda McDaniel, wedding planner for the Fearrington House Inn in Pittsboro, North Carolina.
Tea Party Wedding Venues
Looking to find a magical tea party wedding venue? The Knot Vendor Marketplace makes it easy to filter and sort for the perfect venues near you. McDaniel suggests, "Look for a garden setting or dining room overlooking the gardens. Have the ceremony in the garden and then the reception can be a more traditional tea party with tables set in floral fabrics, vintage tea china and soft florals on the tables."
Tea Party Wedding Budget
Planning the budget for any wedding comes with nuances and particularities depending on everything from the flowers to the guest count, and The Knot Budget Advisor can help keep you on track. But, often, a tea party wedding is less expensive than an evening celebration.
Sasha Dutta, founder and CEO at Fierce Events in Central Florida, explains that the largest cost for a wedding is often food and alcohol, and this is where a wedding tea party has a leg up on traditional receptions. "With a tea party wedding, scones, crumpets, tea sandwiches, pastries, jams and clotted cream are served along with variations of tea, which can reduce costs significantly," Dutta says. She expects a tea party wedding to cost around $8,000 to $10,000 for 100 guests, with even more savings coming from booking a venue earlier in the day rather than in the evening.
Tea Party Wedding Fashion
A tea party wedding is an opportunity to have fun with thematic dressing, whether you picture your guests wearing a fascinator or donning a more formal Bridgerton-inspired look. Tell your guests to put on their floral frocks and best daytime wedding guest dress for a whimsical celebration.
Tea Party Wedding Invitations
Set the stage for your tea party wedding by introducing the theme as soon as you send out the invitations. McDaniel suggests invitations in soft pastels with floral details and a tea-inspired twist. Let your tea party wedding invitations be a bit more playful than a more formal invite, and look for options on The Knot Invitations.
12 Tea Party Wedding Ideas
A themed wedding is an opportunity to run wild with charming decor. From mismatched china to tea roses and towers of almost-too-pretty-to-eat sweets, tea party wedding ideas are near-endless. Here's how you can find inspiration for your teatime celebration in every season.
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1. Abundant Flowers
A tea party is the perfect opportunity to lean into colorful, gorgeous flowers in playful bright hues or pretty pastel shades. Go with an English tea party wedding vibe, and put together arrangements that have an imperfect, collected look to them, as if they've just been plucked from a cottage garden.
2. Stacks of Books
Photo: Agnes Malorny Photography
A quaint afternoon surrounded by stacks of books goes hand-in-hand with a tea party wedding reception. Rather than using a traditional tea party tower, set some of your desserts on tiered stacks of vintage books. Include some of your favorite titles for a fun touch.
3. Tea Party Wedding Centerpieces
Photo: Abby Fox Photography
Embrace the theme by using teapots as centerpieces and teacups as accents. Lush roses are just the right shape to complement the low profile of a teapot, and a single bloom in each teacup is the sweetest look.
4. Mismatched China
Photo: Leah Marie Photography
Use wedding planning as an opportunity to curate a collection of perfectly mismatched wedding china. There's something incredibly charming about a place setting where the teacup doesn't match the dessert plate, and your neighbor's setting doesn't match yours. The common thread, however, is a vintage-inspired tea party wedding.
5. Cozy Winter Tea Party
While you might first think of a garden party in the spring when you think of a tea party wedding, this theme can work any time of year. For a bookworm couple, McDaniel says, "Winter could be a tea party around a cozy fireplace. How about inside a bookstore—that could be a fun setting for a tea party wedding!"
6. Charmed Escort Cards
There's something about charm bracelets and tea parties that just seems right together. Maybe it's the nostalgia or the girlish whimsy, but we love the idea of incorporating sweet little charms into a tea-party-inspired wedding. Use pewter charms in tea party motifs—tea cups, teapots, pastries—to set the stage for a surprise moment when guests find out their table number.
7. Alice in Wonderland Invites
If your tea party wedding has a theme, like Alice in Wonderland, preview the fun that's to come by including a nod to it on the invitation. These invites go all in on the quirky, bold design that defines the Alice in Wonderland tea party wedding aesthetic and sets guests up for a trip through the looking glass.
8. Tea and Biscuit Favors
Photo: Brooke Courtney Photography
Sending guests off with a little treat to enjoy the next day is always appreciated, and a small goodie bag with tea and biscuits makes for a lovely tea party wedding favor. Order tea and biscuits from the UK for a true tea party delight, or find a local bakery for a hometown touch.
9. Tea Cups as Tea Lights
Photo: Laura Radniecki Images
The glow of tea lights across a table at a wedding is one of the most magical sights. Rather than reaching for the typical tea light holders, set tea lights in mismatched vintage teacups, scattering them down the table.
10. Tea Cup Chandelier
Tea cups hanging cheerfully from a chandelier are the most charming way to lean into the tea party theme. If you're getting married in a venue where they host tea parties regularly, they may have a tea cup chandelier like this one, but you can also DIY it by hanging your own collection.
11. Creative Libations
Tea doesn't have to mean serving one or two classics and calling it a day. You can get creative with different variations, as well as iced and alcoholic varieties. "For beverages, you can have twists on tea—a traditional tea bar, cocktails like an Earl Grey gin fizz or champagne with hibiscus and pretty mocktails with edible flowers," McDaniel says.
12. Tea-Inspired Wedding Cake
You can still have a tea party wedding cake in addition to all the petit fours and sweets that you'll find at a tea party wedding. McDaniel suggests leaning into the tea theme: "The cake could be an Earl Grey cake flavor!"
