The Marvellous Tea dance company are the rather lovely duo of Angie Coburn and Donna Templeman. They started up in Armley doing a one off event for the I love West Leeds festival 5 years ago. The event went so well they carried on and by their own admission got into business by accident.
The vintage themes come from a joint love of vintage clothing and home wares and a tendency to collect vintage items, items that you may see used in their pop up tea rooms that can be found anywhere from weddings and private events to music festivals.
They ladies have recently started using Dock St Market as a base. I asked Donna about this.
‘Dock St is amazing, it’s nice to have my house back and to actually leave to go to work in a proper kitchen with lots of space’
Donna explained to me that the Cakes are ‘Traditional English with a Twist… A lot of our inspiration is based on classic recipes from old books that we have adapted and made our own. We also look at trends in the baking world, cupcakes are in fashion now so we are doing a lot of those at the moment, using interesting flavour combinations.
Quality is as important to us as looks so we use free range eggs and organic butter and milk in our baking. Its all good home cooked stuff.’
Angie told me about this Fridays event:
‘Its a very un-royal tea party. Seeing in the news about people holding street parties reminded me of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee when I was a punk rocker and how I felt at that time, it brought back a lot of memories.’
‘The event wont be anti royal, it’s just ironic and fun for those who are not all that bothered about the wedding. It’s going to be Royalist vs Rebel. We are hoping people will come dressed up- there are prizes for the best dressed in each side.’
Donna added ‘it’s all very tongue and cheek, we like to have a giggle about things, we are not snobs, we don’t take things too seriously’.
‘We are very child friendly as a company and as it’s a day time event we are hoping that children will come too (Entry is free for under 12’s)’
As well as tea and cake and bangers and mash, there will be music from the Company’s resident DJ Honey Dripper who plays ‘all sorts’ including 40s- 60s jive and rock n roll tunes and DJ Albert who will be playing punk rock and cockney knees up tunes from acts such as Chas and Dave.
Bingo will be called by ‘Gin Lizzie’ and there will also be a Tombola, Raffle and vintage board games to play
A Right Unroyal Tea Party, Dock St Market, Fri 29th April 1pm-8pm £2 (free for kids under 12)
If you cant attend the event, look out for the Marvellous Tea Dance Company cakes in Dock St Market where you can take away or sit down with a pot of tea and relax.