I hope you all had a fantastic New Year’s Eve and are having a fabulous 2015 so far! I am going to start a series of resolution-themed posts tomorrow, but first I wanted to share some photos and thoughts from one more holiday tea!

The Townsend Hotel is a crazy-beautiful, opulent hotel in Birmingham, Michigan. I fell in love with it when we were scouting venues for our wedding (though we ended up having our reception at another gorgeous place closer to our house), so I was really excited when my mom said she had gotten a reservation for us and her friend Laura to have tea there.

It was good, but different than any other afternoon tea I’ve ever been to. For one thing, we were not given a list or menu of teas to choose from; a waiter just approached our table and asked if we’d like some raspberry tea. After he had poured it into two of the three cups, someone asked if it was a black tea, and he said it wasn’t — but there was a black tea with cinnamon available.

We did manage to get some of the black tea with cinnamon a bit later, but then people kept coming around to fill up our cups as soon as we were done, so I don’t know if they have other flavors of tea or what those other flavors might be. The raspberry and black with cinnamon were both very good, though.

We were seated in the lobby, with my mom and I on a couch and Laura on a chair, and the scones were waiting for us when we sat down. And while the scones were pretty good, we thought it was strange that they gave us lemon curd to go with the cinnamon chip scones.

The sandwiches were very pretty, but my mom had forgotten to tell them ahead of time that I am allergic to seafood, so they brought shrimp sandwiches and salmon sandwiches with caviar for all of us. The three other sandwiches I did eat were good, though, and the tiny quail egg on the sandwich with asparagus and boursin was a cute touch.

I wasn’t sure I would like these teeny desserts when they explained what they were, because two of them involved white chocolate. But they all ended up being awesome. The little pyramid is a pumpkin cheesecake, the yellow is lemon in a white chocolate cup, and the one with the striped roll on top is raspberry in a dark chocolate cup. Yum!

While it was incredibly gorgeous and very fun, there were some things I’d probably change if I were in charge. But, of course, none of those things will stop me from going back.

My outfit: Dress: Kate Spade (on sale!), Sweater: Anthropologie (old, but this is similar), Necklace: J.Crew (borrowed from my mom)

My mom’s outfit: Dress: Anthropologie (no longer available, but similar style here), Sweater: Kate Spade (old, but similar here), Earrings: Anthropologie (no longer available, but these are similar)