History of Bridal Veils
A veil is an integral part of making a bride look like a bride; without the veil, a wedding gown is just an elaborate party dress. A veil can be as tiny as an eye-catching wisp of chiffon spilling from a hat's brim, or it can be a swath of lace covering the bride from head to toe. Some brides choose a blusher veil---a separate, short piece of netting that shrouds the face---that their grooms must lift before their first kiss as husband and wife, and some choose to walk down the aisle bare-faced but with a cascade of tulle dancing merrily in their wakes. However today's bride chooses to interpret it, the wedding veil has a long and varied history. Does this Spark an idea?
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Greece and Rome
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The first mention of a wedding veil was in Ancient Greece. Greek women wore veils as part of their everyday clothing, but Greek brides' veils were bright yellow; this color was superstitiously supposed to ward off evil spirits. The Romans borrowed the custom for their brides, though the veils were of a bright, translucent red fabric and sometimes decorated with metallic threads. Neither Greek nor Roman wedding veils covered the brides' faces.
Medieval Europe
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In the 15th century, the Crusades changed the way the Europeans looked at the world and brought an influx of ideas from the East. Crusaders had seen Muslim women wearing veils which shrouded them completely, and came away with the idea that the veils were symbolic of feminine purity. Their brides---who were eager to reinforce the idea that they had remained pure while their men were away---adopted the veils for their weddings in virginal white.
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Other Styles
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In Europe in the 1700s, bridal hats trimmed with lace began to supplant the long, elaborate veils. Brides would wear bonnets, caps or hats perched on their elaborately-styled hair, and accentuate their headgear with frills of lace and ribbon. Tulle (a sheer, lightweight fabric) was invented in the early 1800s, and was quickly adapted for use in wedding finery.
19th Century England
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At age 18, Queen Victoria took the English throne in 1837. Three years later she was married in a storybook wedding to her first cousin, Albert---a love match, which was almost unheard of among royalty in those days. The style at the time was for a bride to wear a practical dress that could be worn again later---even in black, which was useful as funeral wear. Victoria revolutionized the fashion world by wearing impractical white satin and a long, handmade lace veil fastened to an orange-blossom wreath---and brides all over Europe followed her example.
America
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In 1799, Eleanor "Nellie" Custis---Martha Washington's daughter by her first husband---married Lawrence Lewis, George Washington's personal secretary, at Mount Vernon. This was long before Queen Victoria's marriage transformed wedding styles, and wedding veils had not yet caught on in the New World. Nellie, however, had a sentimental reason to wear a lace veil at her wedding: her fiancé had first glimpsed her face through a lace-curtained window. This glimpse of romance in high society prompted American brides to wear veils at their own weddings, and they continue to be popular to this day.
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References
- Photo Credit Brides Veil image by Kevin Cooke from Fotolia.com
