Tea, Scones, Sarah and Andy : Local Anglophiles Gather to Celebrate the Royal Wedding

As the images of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew exchanging wedding vows flickered from the television Wednesday, the well-dressed patrons of an English tea room in Costa Mesa buttered their scones and drained their teacups in honor of the new Duke and Duchess of York.

“It makes us want to be there,” said British-born Denys Ellis, watching the hours-old pageantry on videotape and munching English wedding cake with her mother and grandmother at Tea and Sympathy.

The antique-filled tea shop was doing brisk business Wednesday among Britons and Anglophiles as three sittings of special afternoon tea were served, along with replays of the royal nuptials.

‘Prettier’ Gown

“It was exquisite,” British-born Tangie Velie of Costa Mesa said of the wedding, as she sipped tea with a friend in front of the telly. “I thought her gown was a lot prettier than Diana’s,” she added, referring to the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince Charles five years ago. But this was not the first time she had seen the Fergie-Andy wedding, which was broadcast live about 2 a.m. PDT, Velie said.

“I stayed on the sofa all night and put on the alarm to watch it” live, she said.

Bleary eyes Wednesday were the mark of the dedicated royalty watchers throughout the county. Nancy Williams, owner of Tea and Sympathy, said she had received a couple of inquiries before about the proper thing to serve to wedding watchers at 2 a.m. Her answer: scones and tea, if they were not in the mood for champagne.

Tea room customers, British and American, got a taste of the mother country Wednesday. The tea was a strong-brewed Red Rose, served in silver pots by English waitresses. Finger sandwiches, scones (English biscuits) with butter, cream and jam, cake and champagne filled out the menu. The cake, a sort of fruit cake with sugary marzipan icing, was the kind that one might find at an English wedding.

The shop, with flowered tea cups perched on shelves against the flowery papered walls, was decorated with white streamers and a paper wedding bell. Owner Williams, who is American, said the idea of celebrating the royal wedding came from the previous owner, a Briton who had done the same to mark the nuptials of Charles and Diana.

Seven women--and not a Briton among them--filled one table Wednesday to celebrate a birthday, but they saluted the royal couple, too. At another table of Americans, Dardie Dunlap of Newport Beach toasted the royal couple with family and friends.

“I think it’s just wonderful,” she said of the wedding, for which she sacrificed a night’s sleep earlier Wednesday. “I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it. No one can do it like the British when it comes to pageantry,” she said.

Ellis, her mother and grandmother, all originally from the Isle of Man off the Scottish coast, said they were happy that the royal wedding was lifting the spirits of their economically depressed compatriots back home.

“They need something. They’re in a dire situation there,” said Ellis’ mother, Pat Stewart of Costa Mesa.

But they also understood the Americans’ fascination with the wedding, they said.

“They love the traditionalism of it. . . . There’s a real fairy tale element to it,” said Ellis, 36, of Palos Verdes.

“It’s a sense of history. We’re talking not 200 years, but 800 or 900 years,” Stewart said. Royalty “is something money can’t buy.”

Americans are fascinated with royalty “because they don’t have any,” said Kathleen Duggan of Tustin, Stewart’s mother and Ellis’ grandmother. “You have to have tradition. Royalty has been going on for centuries.”

The tea room was not the only site where Orange County residents were observing the nuptials. The British and Dominion Social Club in Garden Grove, which feted the royal couple with a dance Saturday, planned to show a tape of the wedding Wednesday night. But some couldn’t wait.

Jane Clark, the club’s entertainment coordinator, stayed up throughout the night to watch the wedding with about a dozen family and friends.

“And it was well worth it,” Clark said. The most excited of her clan was her 16-year-old son, who was born in England and wants to return there, first as a college student and later as a palace guard, she said. Her party feasted on champagne and wedding cake--the top tier left over from the club’s Saturday night dance.

“I stayed up all night. . . . I thought it was marvelous, just beautiful,” said a sleepy Beryl Pearson, president of the club.

The bride’s gown was “beautiful, very royal looking,” and the bridegroom reminded Pearson of Prince Philip when he married Queen Elizabeth, she said. All of the royal family looked great, she said, although she thought Diana’s hat with its upturned brim “was horrible.” But the ceremony was well worth losing sleep over. True, she could have watched a replay of the nuptials later, she said.

But watching it as it happened “was sort of like being there. A replay is not the same. It’s already happened. . . . I have no regrets. I shall do it for the next one.”