This is a little bit different than a birthday party, but my cousin threw a “tea party” for our other cousin’s baby shower. She collected a bunch of inexpensive mismatched cups and saucers from thrift stores and garage sales (more of the fancier looking kind, or old fashioned ones like this) and teapots too, then they set all of the tables with them and served different kinds of tea and those little sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
But for your party, you could certainly have tea, but you might serve different kinds of dips and appetizers in the cups. You could set up one table that had these cups and saucers with the dips and appetizers and several of those multi tiered sandwich/dessert serving trays, which I always see at the thrift stores.
Here are some good Tea Sandwich Recipes and here are More Tea Sandwich Recipes
Other things that are often served at real tea parties are Waldorf Salad and Chinese Chicken Salad and Ambrosia and Tomatoes Stuffed with Tuna Salad
Also, all of the guest wore hats (typical of old-fashioned style British tea parties) but your guests could wear silly or whimsical or downright outrageous hats.
Cut out Cheshire Cat smiles and tape them in strategic areas all over the house or other party venue.
Since it is a 21st birthday party, there should probably be a pitcher of Long Island Ice Tea, with some sort of a label denoting Not Your Average Alice in Wonderland’s Iced Tea .
You should also have some drinks (whatever kind you want) with a sign in front of the serving station that says Drink Me and some appetizers with signs that say Eat Me. Does anyone recall if the item Alice ate was a piece of cheese or whether it was a mushroom? If it’s a mushroom, make sure you have some marinated mushrooms as one of the appetizers.
And now that I’ve been searching for whether it was cheese or something else that Alice ate, I found this Alice In Wonderland Party Site
For the music, I’m thinking mostly pyschedlic music from the 60’s mixed in with some jazz such as:
Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan
Do I Have to do this All Over Again? by The Monkees
Blue Jay Way by The Beatles
Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys
So What by Miles Davis
Only a Northern Song by The Beatles
Eight Miles High by The Byrds
Light My Fire by The Doors
Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock
My Favorite Things John Coltrane.