Swifties took over the Rittenhouse Hotel for Galentine’s tea. Yes, there were friendship bracelets.

One of my first hints that this afternoon tea would be unlike any other was when the harpist ducked out only 15 minutes into her set and promptly returned in an entirely different outfit. All told, Maryanne Meyer went through seven wardrobe changes in the span of two hours, from a floor-length yellow floral gown under a velvet cape to a dazzling silver sequin minidress to a one-legged, sequin-snake-emblazoned unitard. Each ensemble represented a new album — Evermore, Fearless, Reputation, respectively — as she played through her homage to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Meyer was the live entertainment at the Swiftie Galentine’s tea blending event on Saturday at the Rittenhouse Hotel’s Mary Cassatt Tea Room, which brought together Swifties (ahem, Swift-teas) for a not-so-traditional afternoon tea.

Still haunted by FOMO after missing the Philly stop on the Eras Tour last spring, I jumped on the chance to take my 12-year-old daughter, Benny, to an event that combined some of her favorite things: Taylor Swift, herbal tea, and crafting. Meyer’s plucky string renditions of songs like “Willow” and “Champagne Problems,” paired with her artful outfits, were the unexpected highlights.

“I can’t think of a recent performance where I’ve had more fun,” Meyer told me. “Essentially, I got to play dress-up and perform two hours of my favorite music to a room full of guests who were as excited about it as I was — it was a celebration of shared fandom.”

Guests in the elegant, sunlit room were indeed as excited about it as she was. Tables of women spent the afternoon mixing custom tea blends from three different flavor profiles, each one inspired by one of her albums and dreamed up by the Rittenhouse’s afternoon tea manager, AJ Memmo.

Folklore, for example, combined bowls of loose jasmine tea leaves, spearmint, thyme, lemongrass, and sage, Red was Rooibos with rosy-hued hibiscus, raspberry and pink peppercorn, and Lover a sweet strawberry ceylon and rosehips, white and dark chocolate. (As a former People magazine staffer and mother of three daughters, I’m well versed in the Swift oeuvre, but Benny did have to point out that the placards for each tea ingredient were printed in the font from each album, an Easter egg the pop star herself would surely appreciate.) Guests were encouraged to mix fragrant ingredients to create their own harmonious cup.

The Rittenhouse has been hosting afternoon tea since the hotel first opened in 1989 (coincidentally, the same year another icon was born), usually a classic format featuring a tiered cake plate of sandwiches and sweets and scones. Last year, they started offering Celestial tea blending workshops with tarot card readings, and when the Eras Tour came to Philly over Mother’s Day weekend last May, the team (infused with Swifties) came up with the idea to put on a Swift-themed tea tied to Galentine’s Day. (For the uninitiated, Galentine’s Day is an annual holiday that falls on February 13th, celebrating female friendship and invented by Amy Poehler’s character on the TV show Parks and Recreation.)

Memmo, a tea sommelier, didn’t consider himself a fan until recently, when he immersed himself in the music while researching for the event.

“I wanted to pick a couple of albums, and ingredients to correlate to them,” he said. “I felt like Folklore and Evermore were a little more rustic, with green, herbal, herbaceous notes, so I started listening to them. Now they’re my two favorite of her albums.”

Besides blending and sipping tea, served alongside treats like purple sweet potato eclairs and white chocolate macarons, the tea room featured stations, including a communal table covered in colorful beads where we could string together friendship bracelets while singing along softly to Meyer’s ethereal soundtrack.

Some attendees were decked in Swift style, wearing Folklore-inspired cardigans or fuzzy jackets similar to the one the singer wears on tour while playing her Midnights Era.

Jenna Collazzo, a med student at Temple University and fan since she attended her first concert (Swift’s Red tour,) wore a pastel green dress paired with cowboy boots, and butterfly clips adorning her blond waves. At the last minute, she decided against completing the Lover Era-esque look with a diamond-fringed cowboy hat. (She was joined by her sweet mom, who seemed both delighted to be spending time with her daughter over afternoon tea and relieved that she opted against the hat.)

At the table next to us, I watched three women clink glasses filled with a soft purple cocktail called a Lavender Haze, made with Butterfly Pea Flower tea, gin, and lavender. The trio — two sisters and a friend — had all gone to an Eras Tour concert and told me about the pure joy of the experience, and how the whole crowd felt like friends. They were drawn to the tea as an excuse to gather for Galentine’s Day, and wondered if the harpist was available for other events.

For her part, Meyer has been a Taylor Swift fan since her album 1989 (released in 2014.) “Lover,” a favorite song, was the first Swift song she learned to play on the harp, followed by a handful more. But the Galentine’s event was her motivation to put together an entire two hour set that included favorites of hers and her colleagues, including tea server and fellow Swiftie Horacio Reyna-Martinez.

“After the final set, I blended a tea, took a selfie with the team, and made a friendship bracelet while sipping on a Lavender Haze cocktail,” she said. “It was an absolute dream.”