Historic DC Weddings
• June 29, 2012

Imagine your wedding day as national headline news, read from DC to Des Moines. You, your groom and your guest list are the subject of Washington’s biggest event of the year, and anyone who’s anyone is going to be there.

Marjorie Merriweather Post became accustomed to this tradition, as the bride in four of her own weddings, and the unofficial wedding planner for each of her three daughters. As the daughter of Charles William Postum, the founder of Postum Cereal Company (now Post and General Mills cereal) Mrs. Post was a distinguished socialite, with an eye for putting on spectacular events.

A regular host of Washington socialite dinner parties, Mrs. Post had a remarkable list of contacts, including Washington’s elite. Pulling from these contacts, Mrs. Post created the guest lists for each of the weddings she planned. These traditional white weddings stood apart from the rest because both the bride and her guests were all Washington socialites, and the events they attended were guaranteed to be grand.

Both as a bride and a planner, Marjorie Post had an extraordinary ability to envision an event from start to finish, scrupulously putting every last detail in place. In her second wedding to E.F. Hutton, Mrs. Post coordinated everything from her dress and flowers down to the color of the icing on the cake.

Very interested in fashion, Mrs. Post’s wedding dresses reflected the most prominent styles of the time. The first dress she wore to her 1905 wedding to Edward Close was very traditional, featuring a high collar and more fitted bodice. This changed drastically by her 1935 wedding to Joseph E. Davies, when she wore a dress of true Hollywood glam made of velvet with a seven-foot train. By her fourth wedding in 1958, she chose to embrace the popularity of the shorter gown, despite being nearly 70 years old.

Besides having an incredible eye for design, it was the way in which Mrs. Post carried out these events that made them a cut above the rest. By sending out reminders before the event occurred and thank-you notes in appreciation of all those attended, Marjorie Post had perfected the role of a socialite in gaining the respect of all who knew her.

Although Mrs. Post’s gatherings had a reputation for extravagance, and her guest list filled with Washington’s most powerful names, many of the traditions were no different than weddings of today. As a bride herself, Marjorie Post certainly had her bridal opinion, picking the color, style, fabric and design of her bridesmaids’ dresses. As the mother of three young brides, Mrs. Post had a strong hand in navigating their weddings as well, using her contacts to secure an amazing event.

Just as today, historic Washington socialite weddings were a monumental moment in the bride’s life, the planning as much of an event as the wedding itself. In observing the traditional ways weddings have been done in the past we can all gain a greater appreciation for the traditions we still carry out today.

For more information on Marjorie Merriweather Post visit the Hillwood Museum’s upcoming exhibit featuring all four of Mrs. Post’s wedding dresses and many other wedding artifacts. [gallery ids="99594,105020,105009,105016,105013" nav="thumbs"]

Steeping with Charm
• July 26, 2011

In hopes of discovering why tea has grown so popular recently, The Georgetowner interviewed the owners of two local tea shops, Hollie of Ching Ching Cha in Georgetown and Guy of Zen Tara Fine Teas in Bethesda, MD.

Tell us about your background and how you decided to open a tea shop.

Hollie: 15 years ago I ran into a Taiwanese Teahouse in Paris during my year of traveling in France and decided to have my own. I am chinese from Hong Kong.

Guy: I teamed up with co-owner Methee Thavornvongkajorn to open the shop. My background is in architecture and design, Methees’ is in the spa industry. We wanted to create a more contemporary version of a tea shop. We actually started looking onto it back in 2007 and worked on become knowledgeable about tea while having a part-time tea counter at the Farm Women’s Cooperative Market in Bethesda. We were attending the World Tea Expo every year and took almost 2 years to find the right location which turned about to be less than 2 blocks away from the Farmer’s Market on Wisconsin Avenue. We’re happy with the way things turned out, the shop is 1600 sq.ft., the largest tea shop we know of in the Metro DC region, we have a separate glass walled tea tasting room where we hold monthly events and true to our Zen name, it is a very relaxing, serene environment focused on tea.

Why do you love selling tea?

Hollie: I love selling tea because I love tea!

Guy: It is a great tasting beverage that is good for you. It is great to be able to go to the shop every day and work with a product that has such positive qualities. It is also a product with a tremendous history that literally has changed the fortunes of more than one country from Asia to Europe to the United States – tea has a great story. Here in the U.S. it is a particularly exciting time to be a part of the tea industry as our country is (finally?) living up to its’ potential of being great tea consumers. Right now, we’re probably getting the widest variety and some of the best teas we’ve ever been able to import into the U.S. We have 114 teas at the shop and weekly get customer requests recommendations for just one more tea they
would like us to find.

What about tea do you think is making it so popular all of a sudden?

Hollie: It’s a beverage taste delicious and good for health which is a rare combination.Nowadays, most of us are searching for food and drinks that will benefits our health. It’s also affordable, and easy to prepare.

Guy: Better tasting loose teas are available now – grocery store tea bags aren’t the only options (similar to when the coffee industry broke open from a limited number of coffees in a can or “freeze-dried” jars in grocery stores). Consumers are more aware of health benefits. There is also a generational shift in more than one direction perhaps. The baby boomer generation is more sensitive to coffee’s effects and seems to be stepping away from caffeine spikes and crashes to the more gentle sustained lift of teas. At the same time for younger tea drinkers, now that there are more contemporary teahouse options that aren’t just about lace tablecloths and finger sandwiches, tea has become something hip they are embracing, like what happened with coffeehouses 20 years ago.

What is the question you get most when customers visit your tea shop?

Hollie: A lot of people come in asking what kind of tea will benefit health or help them lose weight.

Guy: It would be a tie between a question and a misunderstanding. The question is about caffeine levels of different teas or between coffees and teas (in general, tea has half the caffeine per cup depending how it is prepared). The other is that loose tea is too complicated or takes too long to prepare. With most mugs and pots coming with their own infusing basket or the disposable loose tea infusing bags like we use at the shop, we can quickly show customers it isn’t such an ordeal.

What makes one tea better than another?

Hollie: A tea is made better by the quality of the leaves, the taste, the aroma, the texture and the after taste.

Guy: Tea, like wine, tastes different depending on where it is grown depending on the soil, climate and how the tea is cultivated. Certain regions have produced the best types of tea going back sometimes thousands of years. Limited growing seasons or production will make these teas more expensive. In general, loose teas have a better flavor and are of a higher quality than lower grade teas used in teabags. That said, we always tell customers whatever tea they enjoy is the best tea for them. Some customers prefer pure teas without any floral or fruit blends, others like the wide range of flavored teas that creatively used added ingredients blended with tea leaves. However; like with wine, there does seem to be a path that tea drinkers at the shop progess through from drinking black and green teas to more complex oolong and puerh teas.

What is your favorite type of tea and why?

Hollie: My favourite kind of tea depends on the season. I like Dragon Well in spring, Dongding Oolong in the summer, Pheonix Oolong in the autumn and Pu Erh in cold winter days.

Guy : Very hard to answer. Methee and I have a luxury in buying tea for the shop in that we get to taste and explore literally hundreds of teas a year as we constantly try and select the best teas for the shop. From month to month the favorite changes but a couple of teas that are always on the list are our organic Golden Yunnan black tea, organic Dragon Well green tea and our Cherry Blossom White Tea.

Tell us about the teacups and kettles you sell in your tea house.

Hollie: Our teawares are mainly from china, taiwan and japan. we use different size and different material of pot and cups for different types of teasdepending on the water temperatures that are needed to brew the teas. For example for green teas, we use a ceramic cha chong(a tea bowl with a lid and a sauce) because the material and the shape of the bowl allows the teas cool rapidly so it won’t bring out the bitterness of the teas. When the visual effect is important we will use a glass so you can see the shape and the color of the teas. Oolong will is served with a “kung fung” style tea set containing a Yixing clay teapot, an aroma cup, a drinking cup, an ocean of tea, a tea pool and a dreg spoon. It is quite elaborate and lots of fun to prepare. It’s best to always have the hot water accessible or ready on the table because running back and forth to the kitchen is not relaxing.