Need help for Lolita Tea Party

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Is this for Midwest?

>>9529834
Protip intended without a bit of salt: call them lolitas, not "lolita cosplayers". Most lolitas, even at an anime convention, consider lolita a fashion style and not a cosplay, so getting it wrong makes you look clueless at best.

No
>lolita cosplayers
>arts and crafts (actually maybe, depends)
>guided discussion

Yes
>actual tea (black, green, dessert, noncaf)
>cookies
>scones
>jam, cream
>finger sandwiches

Tables should be fully set with tablecloths. You don't need to use real dishware but get the nice plastic or paper stuff, not the shitty ones.

Don't just go to costco and pick up whatever snacks seem fancy. Research tea houses in the area and find out if they do catering.

Raffles are standard. Prizes are usually gift cards from major brands (Angelic Pretty, don't bother with Baby The Stars Shine Bright they're weird about gift cards) and small/mid-sized accessories from indie brands (Mossbadger, Lotv).

Try to decorate just a bit. There should be simple centerpieces and some wall hangings with a bit of classical or jazz music playing quietly in the background. A little ambiance goes a long way. If you have people serving the attendees with the food, they should be dressed alright and uniformly like a white button down and black pants.

Definitely choose a theme. That will help with choosing decorations and give lolitas a prompt to form coords around. Popular themes include: flowers, animals, sweets, fairy tales, etc.

Tickets for tea parties without special guests like designers from major brands tend to be around $20-35 USD.

Everyone should receive a small goodie bag, even if it's just some Japanese candy, postcards, and tea wrapped in plastic bags from Daiso.

Lolitas can be left to their own accord and entertain themselves for the most part (80% of all chatter at tea parties is gossip). Raffles are held at the end. Coord contests are a simple way to push guests to dress their best, make sure to provide a prize for the winner, and a way for people to vote.

tl;dr put more effort than a fucking skittle platter on dollar tree plates

>>9529834
Look up afternoon tea for menu idea, and decor. Might want to have goodie bags too if this is a con

>>9529834
Actual tea is expected, make sure there are plenty of drinks for everyone, even if you can only manage self-service. There'll be a variety of dietary requirements so you need to have a few different options, then you can have stuff like sandwiches, cakes, etc.

Your options are going to be limited by what your hotel's catering can do or whether you self-cater. If it's a mid-sized con I suppose you wouldn't have the budget for any special guest, but larger cons and lolita events invite Japanese brand guests and often have a raffle and a quiz or icebreaker games, plus an area with nice lighting where people can take photos.

An example of what you could self-cater relatively easily is some kind of black tea, some kind of herbal tea (e.g. peppermint, chamomile) or juice/lemonade as a non-caffeinated option, perhaps coffee or a flavoured tea like Earl Grey or rose green tea, plus water for people that want it. You'll need to provide milk, sugar and lemon to go with it, and make sure the milk hasn't been sat somewhere warm all day going off while waiting for the party to start. Rent/borrow/thrift some crockery - it doesn't have to be fancy, just not a paper/plastic cup. You could probably get away with paper/plastic for food at a push but not hot drinks. Then for food you could have finger sandwiches, likely looking at at least one vegan option, one vegetarian option and one meat/fish option (e.g. cucumber sandwiches on margerine, cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches, salmon sandwiches). Make sure they're clearly labelled in case of allergies. Then buy in some nice scones, biscuits, cakes, maybe a fruit salad. This is the minimum people would usually expect.

Is this bait

>>9530115
>Coord contests are a simple way to push guests to dress their best, make sure to provide a prize for the winner, and a way for people to vote.
Careful with the coord contest idea, it can cause way too much unnecessary drama and competitiveness with people arguing about popularity contests. As a rule, contests where you have a designer guest and ask a designer to pick a favourite coord are nice, but contests where the whole room votes don't necessarily go well.

I've never seen a raffle with a gift card as a prize, but it's a nice idea. Usually there'll be small brand/indie accessories like socks or hair accessories or jewellery, or things like cute art. If you search "goody bag" on the cgl archives we've had people discuss what's good to include in a tea party goody bag recently and ideas will come up.

Print replicas are often banned from events like this, design replicas too if they're replicas of a brand attending. Even if you don't have a brand guest, banning replicas is worth considering as it will make lolitas more confident to put down money knowing that other lolitas will be there, not just random cosplayers in knockoffs.

>>9530101
wooooow if so I'm SO GLAD I'm not going to this then, OP sounds absolutely clueless

>>9529834
>Lolita cosplayers
>cosplayers

Don't do this.

>>9530209
Anon, not everyone is a Lolita. At least OP came to ask and is trying their best to understand what they should do

>>9530291
Sorry but doing the most basic level of research isn't hard. "Lolita is a fashion, not a costume" is one of the first thing one finds out about it and if op comes in with a question like this then they were obviously too lazy to do the bare minimum of research, which doesn't forebode well for their event.

>>9529834
Reach out to the local lolita community (they probably have a facebook page) and try to find out who runs it. Then contact them and ask for their help, for instance with decoration and raffle prices. It's always good to have an insider included in the planning, and attendees will be reassured if a well-known (and respected) member of the lolita community is involved.

>>9529834
As far as snacks, nice quality teas and cakes or sweets are a must. Bakery sweets, not store bought chips ahoy and twinkies garbage. A few different teas, green, black, oolong, fruit. But not Lipton tier, at least get Stash or better

Need plenty of nice clean space, preferably in a fancier looking conference room

>>9529834
>lolita cosplayers

That's a really good way to make lolitas hate you

>>9530291
I get that, but I personally would not want to pay to go to a Lolita tea party run by someone who thinks Lolita is cosplay.

I'm seriously questioning why American lolitas go to con's at all instead of lolita/jfashion events

>>9530391
Because for most of us, esp midwestern Lolitas, cons ARE the only j fashion events going on. I have a local lolita community, but it's pretty inactive, so I can't pass up cons with even the smallest fashion/lolita things going on.

Why would you want to throw a tea party for people that you clearly know nothing about?

>baito desu

>>9530391
In some places conventions aren't strictly for anime and manga, they feature other Japanese culture and pop culture related things, including jfash.

Thanks guys! There's so much good info here. Unfortunately no one on staff has ever been to Lolita tea parties and I just wanted to get the basics from one of the toughest crowds to please, which is certainly 4chan. Sorry for calling you all cosplayers! I'm pretty ignorant in the cosplay scene but now I know it's a fashion. I'll pass this on to the event coordinator and hopefully we can throw an event to do the community justice. Thanks!

>>9530571
Another idea is to get in touch with the mods of your local Lolita comm, a lot of people have event planning experience so they might be a good resource in making a legit tea party.

A few videos to give you an idea of what a Lolita tea party is supposed to be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmr37ayxekQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msA3NG1adK8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhwlzjgAezI [4:30]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wixAkHQ0qbM [9:48]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a4jHhL9MxM

Lolitas expect tea parties to be well organised and high quality. If you don't meet the standard you will be dragged for it.

>>9530396
>>9530409
Well in Europe we have yearly Lolita and jfashion events because we organise them ourselves instead of expecting some random non-lolita weeb to organise stuff at their con.

>>9530115
Adding to this, other forms of entertainment I've seen at tea parties I've been to have included:

>lolita bingo
>lolita trivia

I also had one where the hostess had a sheet of paper with a list of common coordinate traits (eg: alice bow, bonnet, certain pattern of socks, certain themed print, brand name, etc.) with numbers. They then rolled a D20 to choose a number. Anyone without that trait in their coordinate had to sit down. If more than one person was remaining, they rolled again, until one person was left. If there was a tie, those people played rock-paper-scissors to figure out the winner.

Prizes for the above games were little things like donated jewellery or brooches.

>>9530391
Imagine this...we do both.