Wearing A Veil For Your Wedding
Veils are one of the very oldest wedding traditions - their origins go way back to when brides would wear them as a protection to keep away evil spirits and then as a way to hide their face when they were entering an arranged marriage so the groom wouldn’t see them properly until they were married. Good grief, that makes every feminist bone in my body shudder! Thankfully today, wearing a wedding veil is much more about bridal fashions and adding extra drama to your wedding outfit than it is about those outdated old-fashioned notions!
Of course you don’t have to wear a veil at all, you can instead just use hair accessories to add glamour or drama to your bridal attire. You can pair hair pins with fresh flowers or go straight for a statement hair comb, tiara or vine. But for the purposes of this post, let’s assume you’re going for a veil and wondering how to wear accessories with it.
Styling Your Hair To Ditch The Veil Post-Ceremony
Veils do look beautiful but let’s face it - a long veil is not the most practical to wear while eating a four-course dinner or dancing the night away. Consequently, many brides opt to wear a veil for the ceremony but remove it straight after. You want to make sure that when you remove your veil, it doesn’t leave your hair looking ‘naked’ or underwhelming on your big day. Typically a veil will come attached to a plain comb to hold it in place, but you can easily add a decorative bridal hair accessory that remains in place after removing your veil. By opting for this, you ensure your hair still looks glamorous even after the veil is gone. Look at how real bride Rebecca styled my vintage victorian statement hair comb here with her veil and then after removing her veil for her reception.
You can also style hair accessories with a veil you later remove if you want to wear your hair down rather than up. A Pair of statement vintage hair pins worn simply to the side provides a nice accent to a veil and leaves some residual glamour when you take the veil off:
Statement Vintage Hair Pins available here. Photography by Beth Young.
A Vintage Wedding Tiara With A Veil
If you’d like a bit more sparkle for the front of your hairstyle, you may be considering a wedding tiara and wondering how to pair this with a veil. You can, of course, simply wear the tiara at the front and clip a veil in at the back.
Vintage blue hair band by Vintage Adornments exclusively for sale at Frock Goddess sustainable bridal wear boutique. Photography by Nisha Keaton.
For a more ethereal boho look though, try the styling shown in this beautiful Ophelia-themed shoot pairing my vintage silver leaf blue rhinestone forehead tiara with a full length embroidered veil. The veil was worn covering the tiara to begin with, and then the tiara fully revealed with the veil swept to the back.
Vintage tiara available here. Photography by Dani Dunn Photography
Pairing Hair Accessories With a Wedding Veil
You have lots of choices when it comes to hair accessories you can add to your veil, so consider all your options to make it your own! You can opt for simple decorative hair pins, a hair band or a sparkling comb or you can go for something a little less obvious like stacking mismatched but complementary hair pins or draping a hair vine over the top of your veil to name just a couple!
Large vintage green hair pin sold but others available here. Other green hair pins sold but more available here. Hair vine sold but others available here. Photography by Beth Young.
Alternative Wedding Veil Styling
The typical image you conjour when you think of a bride in a veil might be a classic bride in white, but just remember your veil can be a great way to bring an alternative vision to life, with all sorts of colours and lengths available. So if you’re a more alternative bride or thinking of a gothic style wedding, there are plenty of options for accessorising with a veil for you too!
Top to bottom, left to right: marcasite tiara paired with black veil available here. Photography by Maria Madison. Vintage black pearl forehead tiara paired with black veil sold but others available here. Photography by Bailie Krutchik. Black gothic hair vine paired with red veil available here. Photography by Sharma Shari.