Blooming Great Tea Party

My friend Emma and I headed out to Manchester for a rainy day of fun. We had been hoping to meet up with the lovely Pearl Westwood who I just haven't been shopping with recently enough, but we'll have to have a spree another day.
We went to Old Fashioned Susie's Blooming Great Tea Party for Marie Curie Cancer Care at the Rain Bar, where I also met the lovely A Thrifty Mrs. It was a delightful vintage themed event, Susie herself wearing a Warehouse dress given a fabulous 50s silhouette with a petticoat. I wore a tea dress from Cow vintage, Manchester and Emma wore her new vintage style frock from Collectif. Emma's very clever with hairstyles and did us both for the occasion. I think she did well considering how much the weather tried to destroy her hard work!
I don't have any vintage bags except for a very slim one (certainly not for day trips!) of my Mum's but I thought my Luella Gisele bag had a bit of that structured feel. Then I wore my recently purchased charity shop floral coat, Topshop tights, New Look shoes and a Miss Selfridge bow ring. Emma wore a cute little cardigan which I thought went perfectly with the dress, New Look shoes, a vintage pearl ring and a sweet little owl necklace from Forever 21 in Birmingham.
I adored the cupcakes donated by The Cupcake Empire which were inspired by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Yummy and fashionable, the buttercream was scrumptious and the icing decorations were the likes of handbags and pearl necklaces. Emma also had a vegan cake baked by Susie herself, and was very impressed.


Between sipping tea and trotting round in the rain we did fit in a little shopping. We had a good look round Selfridges and Harvey Nichols but what I actually bought was tights, tights and more tights. First I popped into H&M because I've been getting so much wear out of my blue tights and also picked up a red pair.
Emma and I both love Pearl's black polka dot ankle high pop socks, a Primark bargain of 50p. We headed to the store in Piccadilly Gardens with time to spare to get to the tea party, but underestimated the size of the place and the queues. Primark's never really been my shop and my memories from visits of years gone by left a somewhat chaotic imprint in my mind. I was pleasantly surprised to see better organised and neater stock this time and as there are some pretty clothes I've been seeing on some of my fellow bloggers I thought I'd take a look.
In the socks and tights section Pearl's specific socks were nowhere to be seen, having sold out. However, we did find some nautical navy ones with anchors on and white polka dot ones for 50p each in the sale and I got some more usual pink ones with cute hearts on. Heading to the exit after paying I spotted some fun coloured tights but had to dash. We weren't doing too badly timewise at this point but Emma and I had different routes in our heads and got our wires crossed, resulting in discovering a bit more of the city. By the time we got to the cupcakes we really needed them for the energy.
After the tea party we headed back to Primark to get a blue pair of tights that's a tad brighter than the H&M one, a candy pink pair and as they were all reduced to 50p I picked up a versatile grey pair too, we'll see what the quality's like in an outfit soon!