Repurposing Wedding Gowns for Tea Time

I enjoy the creativity of tea room owners.  No two tea rooms are ever the same if they have different owners.

A few years back, my girlfriend and I made a couple of visits to a tea room in Davison, Michigan, called Rebecca Ayn's Victorian Tea Room. Unfortunately, the tea room is no longer open, but I wanted to share it with you because of its uniqueness.

It was a wintry Saturday in February, and the Christmas decorations were still on the front porch of the vintage house where the tea room was located.

The owner's name was Joann [pictured below].

She had hats for guests to wear if they chose to do so [and I did!].

Joann was a beautiful seamstress.  What made her tearoom unique, and different from any other I have ever visited was that she turned wedding gowns into table coverings. It may sound strange, but the gowns created a dreamy shabby chic elegance, and a girly fantasyland all rolled into one.   Joann kept a Victorian accented Christmas tree up year 'round in the dining room, as seen in the photo below.

Some of the walls were decorated with women's formal apparel.

My girlfriend, Sandy, and me.

Joann served her scones for dessert, and she had "the best" coconut scones.  I had to do a lot of experimenting before I came close to duplicating the recipe, but I finally developed a pretty good runner-up!   Her scones were on the tiered server on the buffet below.

The gift shoppe is in the photo below.  I loved the gift shoppe because a lot of the items were made by Joann.  She made decorative pillows out of ladies' white or ivory dressy blouses that were beautiful.

I was sad when she had to close, but grateful I had the privilege of having tea there.