Best Royal Party Theme Ideas

British Party Menu Ideas

Everyone loves great food at a party.

Whether you're simply hosting book club or going all-out with a royal tea for your tiny princesses, you're sure to find great recipes to include here.

Afternoon Tea vs. High Tea

The obvious answer to what to serve at a British theme party is tea.

You can choose from an Afternoon tea service or a High tea service -- the main difference between them is High tea involves cocktails and appetizers.

You can read more about what is involved in each style of tea service here.

Get out your fancy tea cups and china and learn how to set a proper tea here. This would be an awesome time to have your kids brush up on their fancy party manners, too!

British Beverages for High Tea

First, be sure to plan out the drinks for the party.

Here are a couple great ideas:

British Tea

Obviously! Stock up on a few flavors and let your guests choose their own flavor, or find a local tea shop that can help you brew a custom blend in a full pot.

We love the hot water kettle featured here for a mix-your-own approach. Fill it up, get it hot, and it will make plenty of tea at one time.

Pimm's Cup

Pimm's, ginger ale, cucumber slices and mint! This is a British classic cocktail.

You can find a full recipe here.

British Foods for the Party

Tea party foods can be quite simple to prepare. The most obvious choice would be a couple options from my extensive list of finger sandwiches but savory sausage rolls are completely delicious, too.

Finger Sandwiches

Cream cheese and cucumbers comes immediately to mind, but serve a tray full of easy options. Here are 30 finger sandwich recipes to get you started but don't miss the assembly and make-ahead tips included!

Sausage Rolls

We tested these after Tim discovered he is 60% British. They are a huge hit with our family.

Get the spiced sausage rolls recipe here.

Chips with Malt Vinegar

And by "chips," of course I mean French fries. I won't tell if you use a bag of frozen fries, just grab a bottle of malt vinegar to serve them with!

British Dessert Recipes

End the tea with something sweet. It doesn't need to be difficult, you could even just pick up a package of tea cakes from the grocery store bakery.

Little iced petit fours would be perfect.

If you want to bake something from scratch, here are a few of my favorite British desserts.

Treacle Tart

This Harry Potter-inspired dessert is perfect for a Royal wedding viewing party. Get the easy treacle tart recipe here.

Shortbread

Grab a tin of simple shortbread cookies at the store to pad out your tea tray. Or, if you love to bake they are actually a very easy cookie to make from scratch.

English Scones

These blueberry scones are our favorite! Serve them with a batch of homemade lemon curd. Or keep it easy and just make these fresh peach scones.

British Trifle

A classic British dessert! My sister and I became obsessed with trifle over the Christmas holiday and now that I got suckered into buying the special trifle dish, it will be a standard part of most of my parties from here forward!

Here are 10 trifle recipes to get you going.

Talk like a Brit:

Challenge your party guests to use as many fun British phrases in their conversations as possible. Share these 50 awesome British slang words to get them going.

Host a Hat Contest:

Bring on the fascinators! The taller, the flowery-ier, the feather-ier the better! I may take this a little too far -- check out the Peanut's tea party hat from many years ago. Spoiler alert: She totally brought home the trophy.

Taste Test the Tea:

Have a blind taste-test contest of a variety of teas. See if the winner can correctly label the flavors.