Valentine’s Day Tea Party

Valentine’s Day Tea Party: a Galentine’s day high tea party with finger sandwiches, scones, and desserts with your girl friends.

What could be more fun than a Valentine’s Day tea party?  Whether you’re celebrating with big girls or little girls a tea party is always a good idea.  I invited some of my besties over for an afternoon of sipping tea, and eating treats and we had the best time.  This is such a great girlie idea to do with your gal pals this year for celebrating love day.  But tea parties are also fun for the whole family, and grandparents particularly love them.  It would also be a great way to surprise your partner.  

High tea is usually served in the late afternoon.  It was a originally a way to fill the gap between lunch and much latter dinner times then most of us have today.  I usually serve high tea as late lunch, that way guests have room for all the courses, and can really enjoy the whole menu.  High tea in tea rooms and hotels is traditionally served on a three tier platter with the bottom layer holding small tea sandwiches, the second layer holding scones and their accompaniments, and the final top layer holding sweets.  We didn’t use a tiered tray, but we did include all the delicious elements for our high tea.

The Tea Party Decor

I wanted the party decor and dining table to be very girly and coquette aesthetic influenced with lots of pink and bows on everything.  It was all so pretty.  I started out with the prettiest floral tablecloth.  If you can’t find what you’re after you can always look at the fabric store.  Our’s was light pink with tiny rosebuds and the perfect backdrop for our table. 

I used lots of vintage pieces for this party, including the pink depression glass luncheon plates.  I layered these with some cute heart plates for Valentine’s Day.  It’s always nice to offer guests one plate for savoury and a fresh plate for sweet for a high tea.  The tea cups were also vintage.  Look for them at thrift stores or antique stores.  They’re all different, but all have touches of pink floral designs to tie them together.  My favourite part of the table settings were the pink champagne coupe glasses, with bows tied on the stems.  These were a very lucky antique store find one day.  Each place setting was finished off with some gold cutlery.  Be sure to include a knife so guests can fix their scones.  We also including gold heart spoons perfect for stirring a cup of tea, and off white linen napkins.

For the centerpiece in the middle of the table I used some gorgeous glass candlestick holders, and added ribbon bows to some.  Candles are fun even in the afternoon for special occasions.  And to add another fun bow detail to our Valentine party, a few of the actual candles have bows painted onto them.  I used a regular craft paint and they still burned perfectly.  This is such a fun way to add an extra detail.  

We also added some really simple floral arrangements of pink spray roses.  I love spray roses, and thought they were perfect to go with our rosebud tablecloth.  We used my collection of vintage bottles for the fresh flowers and they looked so pretty.  I finished off the centrepiece of the table decorations with some small bowls of Valentine candy.  It is a fun detail for the occasion.  I had two matching small swan vessels that I found at the thrift store and added a bow around their necks.  We filled them with candy cinnamon hearts, and Valentine jelly beans.  I used another vintage tea cup as a candy bowl for some conversation hearts, because they’re so quintessentially Valentines.

We also used lots of vintage serving pieces, like pretty china serving plates, vintage tea pots, cake plates.  Look for these pieces at antique stores or thrift stores too.

The Drinks

You can’t have a traditional afternoon tea party without tea of course.  I like a traditional orange pecko, earl grey is a always a good choice too.   It’s a good idea to have a few options for your guests, including something that’s decaf, and herbal tea.  Brew your tea in tea pot, and be sure to have extra hot water for making more tea as the party continues.  We used tea bags, but loose leaf tea feels extra special for a tea party.  

Black tea is traditionally served with milk not cream, so be sure to have some.  I also made some adorable pink heart shaped sugar cubes using a small mold.  They’re very easy to make -see exactly how I made them here.  If you’re having little girls at a tea party, hot chocolate is a great option, and pink hot chocolate for Valentine’s day is even better.  

Since it was a galentine’s’ day party, we also had some sparkling wine. A glass of champagne is a very fun addition to the afternoon.  And the perfect way to make it feel like a real special occasion.  I always recommend having a non-alcoholic cold option for guests too, for any non-drinkers.

The Food

Tea Sandwiches

We had all the traditional tea party food at our Valentine’s tea party.  We started off our high tea with tea sandwiches.  You want these sandwiches to be delicate and easy to eat.  Offer a variety of fillings and breads, remove the crusts and cut the sandwiches into small pieces.  For our tea sandwiches we had:

• cucumber sandwiches
• egg salad on a mini croissant
• chicken salad in toast cups -see the recipe here
• ham and cheese

Make your mini sandwiches about a couple of hours ahead of time and cover well with plastic wrap so that they don’t dry out.  

Cucumber sandwiches are an afternoon tea favourite.  We made finger sandwiches with with white bread, butter, mayo, cream cheese and thinly sliced cucumbers.  Cut off the crusts and slice them into long rectangle fingers.  We also made a few extra special by making open sandwiches cut into a heart shape with a cookie cutter, and topped with a cucumber bow.  To make the bow, use a vegetable peeler to make a long thin slice of cucumber, and then form the bow out of two pieces.   Wrap a small piece of the green cucumber skin around the center to form the bow.  These were so pretty and really delicious too.

I like to serve egg salad on a mini croissant, and top them with some mixed greens.  We also made simple ham and swiss cheese sandwiches with a honey mustard.  Lastly we made chicken salad toast cups.  These are really easy to make and always a hit with guests.  See the recipe here.

Scones

The next traditional course is scones with jam and cream.  We made our Easy Food Processor Scones -see the recipe here.  Instead of cutting them into wedges, I rolled them out and cut them with a cookie cutter to make them heart shaped.

Scones are traditional served with clotted cream.  It’s sometimes hard to find here, look for it in British shops or some grocery stores in the dairy section.  You can also substitute whipped cream if you can find clotted cream.  We served ours with raspberry jam, another great options is strawberry jam, or lemon curd.

Sweets

The final course is is always a variety of sweets.  I try to have a few different options and always include at least one option that is vanilla, chocolate and berry, so that there’s something for everyone.

• shortbread hearts -find recipe here
• homemade strawberry marshmallows
• White cake with raspberry jam filling and Swiss meringue buttercream
• homemade heart shaped custard creams -find recipe here
• mini chocolate eclairs
• assorted macaroons

We also had a cake.  This pretty heart shape vintage cake was so beautiful.  We made it from a white cake, and it had raspberry jam filling and Swiss meringue buttercream.  It was the star of the show.

We also had an assortment of other sweets including heart shaped shortbread cookies -get the recipe here and some homemade strawberry heart shaped marshmallows.  

There was also little cherry pie love letters -see how I made them here.  We also made these heart shaped custard cream cookies -get the recipe here.  As well as some assorted macaroons, and mini chocolate eclairs.  Admittedly we had too many sweet treats and lots of leftovers, but they all looked so beautiful.

We had so much fun and enjoyed hours at the tea table enjoying the delicious food, sipping sparkling wine and tea, and chating.  I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon, or a better type of party for Valentine’s Day.

With a Valentine’s day tea party with your girl friends, life really is a party!

More Valentine’s Day Inspiration

You might also like our Valentine’s Day Pizza Party here.

Also check out our Valentine’s Day Breakfast here.

You might also enjoy our Simple Valentine’s Day Decor here.