Tag: veils

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In no rush for a rescue

This is not how Saturday nights used to start

How did THIS become a time of sheer joy, in which I was willing the tyre guy to take his time rescuing me?


The hard shoulder of the M25 with a flat tyre is not the best start to a Saturday evening, especially when the RAC guy discovers the spare wheel you’ve had stashed in the boot for eight years doesn’t even belong to – or therefore fit – your car.

I’d had a brilliant day, the first of three on a tea-charged corsetry course (www.moodycorsetry.co.uk), and had foregone having a wee before I left because I figured I could last the 50 minute drive home, even after several cups of tea throughout the afternoon.

Ten minutes in, a lot of smoke from my front nearside wheel announced I should have gone when I’d had the chance. When the RAC’s ETA was two hours, I hopped a fence, scrambled up a bank and found some trees where I could cop a squat in the rain and have a good think about my choices.


A 90 minute wait for the RAC bled into a short 45mph limp on a neon orange loaned wheel and a further hour’s wait for the emergency tyre man at Cobham Services. Blue and shivering from the cold, I parked as far as I could from the backfiring, revving engines of a boy racer meet and tried to find consolation in an overpriced chai latte.


But then the cavalry arrived. Not the tyre man, but my beautiful bride Charlotte  dropped her full wedding album. And oh my goodness, I could have sat shivering in the middle of that boy racer meet all night.
Because LOOK.


I hope you enjoy these pics as much as I did, wherever you are to see them.

Couple: Charlotte & Sam (@worldof_char and  @sarnuel)
26/07/25
The longest veil I’ve ever made, at five metres (just under 200″), with bespoke embroidery and trimmed with exquisite appliquèd lace.

Coordinator: @karintindallweddings
Florist: @sophieoliviafloraldesign
Photographer: @laurenbrumby.photography
Videographer: @becky_kinross_videographer
Venues: @bodleianlibraryweddings and @oxfordtownhall
Hair & makeup: @oxfordweddinghairandmakeup
Band: @sweetnlowdownuk
Veil: @hollywintercouture
Harpist: @noa_harpist
Illustrator: @rachelelizabethillustration

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Lifting the Veil on… Evening Veils

The Rise of the Wedding Reception Veil

“Can I ask if any brides are planning on changing into a 2nd veil for the evening? I’m not sure my cathedral veil will be practical for all day,” I read in a wedding group on social media this morning.

While some newlyweds stay in their wedding finery throughout the day and into the evening reception, it’s not uncommon to see a change in outfits. It might be the same outfit slightly modified – the train of the wedding dress gets bustled to make the back the same length as the front for dancefloor practicalities, a suit jacket or lace bolero discarded in the heat, detachable sleeves or overskirt whipped off for a transformation.

The transforming wedding dress I created for Gill, featuring a detachable cape veil and overskirt

Some people change their dress entirely. In Japan where I once spent a year, couples go through so many outfit changes on their wedding day – around five – that they start the morning with a feast because they won’t have time to eat again until the end of the night.

Other people change into a different dress or alternative outfit for the evening. It might be for practical reasons, or simply aesthetics.

Left: The dress I made for Rachael for her ceremony; R: Her sparkling evening reception dress

But what about the veil? In the last year, I’ve seen my first requests for veils specifically for the evening reception. Just like dresses, some are transforming and some are shorter versions of the ceremony veil.

Two transforming veils I’ve made for customers, that use a mechanism similar to dress bustles to make them shorter

I’ve also had orders for a shorter version of the ceremony veil so they can still wear a veil for evening without the worry of it being trampled once the dancefloor throng is in full swing. I’m currently making two versions of the same veil for a customer – one 144″ long for the ceremony and the other 30″ for the evening. I’ll share both as soon as I’m allowed.

“It’S nOt TrAdItOnAl!”

I’ve seen some backlash though, from cries of “I’ve seen it all now,” to seamstress refusals on principle to add a bustle to a veil. My favourite scoff as ever is, “It’s not traditional.”

So let’s not forget why we have wedding veils in the first place. In western culture at least, they were intended for the very practical purpose of concealing the bride from evil spirits lurking around churchyards hunting for virgins and, as we know, all brides are virgins. This was once a very real fear.

Over time, the superstition may have faded to near obscurity but the association of the veil with the wedding day has passed firmly into aesthetic tradition. Anyone not subscribing to the fears of old and/or chooses not to wear a blusher tier over their face is already wearing a veil for aesthetics only and not tradition in the strictest sense.

Different length versions of Happily Ever After

The only reason I didn’t keep my own veil on all day and night nearly 17 years ago was that it was my ‘something borrowed’ and I wanted to give it back before it fell in my dinner/down a toilet. I replaced it with a tulle wrap in the evening. It simply didn’t occur to me to wear a different veil that could take a little gravy (or worse).

So let’s agree that a veil is a headpiece like any other bow, hat, sparkly accessory or whatever. No-one would bat an eyelid at someone changing in or out of one between their own wedding ceremony and reception so I am absolutely here for the evening veil.

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The One Ring Came Full Circle For Me Today

Today The One Ring came full circle for me and I am so excited I just needed to make a note of it.

I’m currently working on the design for a custom veil with elements inspired by The Lord of The Rings. This is awesome enough I  itself.

Here’s one I made earlier (in Italian)

Then this morning, I finally got to meet my very good friend’s mother-in-law who only bloody worked with JRR Tolkien himself! Ann worked with “Professor Tolkien” as she referred to him during his time at Oxford, and she told me he was lovely and, “Just like one of his characters.”

I asked which one and she said, “Tom Bombadil.”

I need to visit her again if she’ll have me to pester her in more depth.

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Wedding Un-Trends for 2024

It’s official: the “un-bride” is in. This is ironic as it essentially means that not following trends is the trend.

The stylist soothsayers are stirring their big-data cauldrons this week and forecasting the wedding trends for 2024. Amid the peach fuzz and torn up seating plans, I was pleasantly surprised that for the second year, the crux according to my bellwether Vogue is that formality and traditions will take a backseat to individual style.

So you can keep your big data, front-row seats at Wedding Fashion Week and your cauldrons (but I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth) because I get to see what that actually means in practice. My customers tend to come to me when they have a good idea what they want but can’t find it in the shops – because it’s not something that would take off in the mainstream because not enough people would buy it.

And that’s the awesome thing.

So, based on what people have been asking me for over the last year, here’s what un-briding is looking like. The un-trends.

  • Transforming dress: see Gill’s detachable train and detachable cape. I’ve also been asked for a voluminous plain dress that unzips at the moment of the first dance
  • Not a dress. Jumpsuits, playsuits, trousers, separates, shirts with trains. Mixing up the traditionally masculine and feminine, like Skye’s Shakespearean Shirt of Dreams.
  • Lace that isn’t floral. Have embroidery software, will create lace. I’ve created bespoke lace and embroidery made of moons, text, pets, in-jokes, bats carrying antique micrometers and the handwriting of lost loved ones. I can even do photos if you fancy having your bodice made from other half’s embroidered face (or why stop there? Let’s make the skirt out of all the faces of your in-laws). The next dress I’m making has some of my most ambitious lace I’ve ever made and I am SO excited to show it (and slightly scared about potential legal action).
  • Colour. I made more black, blush (hello, peach fuzz!) red and blue veils last year than ivory while my bespoke ivory wedding dresses were level pegging with other colours.
  • Upcycling. I’ve just finished restyling a wedding dress as a cocktail dress (I’ll share pics as soon as it’s had it’s big reveal by the bride) and have incorporated lace from mothers’ and grandmothers’ wedding dresses and veils into others. Save the planet, share the love.

Here’s to the untrending trending.

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Bridal nun chic

Winter’s Wedding Words: veil

Winter’s Wedding Words: Veil

Veil comes via French from the Latin velum, meaning a sail, covering or curtain. In the bridal sense, it originates from an Old French term for the head-covering worn by nuns.

I wonder if there was an association there with (assumed) virginity but I can’t find any evidence to confirm or quash that.

Shutterstock

The reason brides started wearing veils was to protect them from the evil spirits lurking around churchyards on the hunt for a virgin (and it is a truth universally acknowledged that all brides are virgins). The veil would supposedly conceal her from such paranormal perverts.

Incidentally, that’s also why her bridesmaids dressed the same – and traditionally, the bride would wear the same as them too; the evil spirits would be too confused about which was the real bride to take a victim.

If evil spirits are really that easily bamboozled, it’s a wonder that they were ever considered a threat at all. And weren’t bridesmaids usually also unmarried? And therefore also (obviously) virgins?

Imagine the spooks having to explain that one to the boss.

Satan: I sent you up there to abduct a virgin bride. Where is she?

Evil spirit: Er, well, I was confused. There were seven of them.

Satan: Seven?

Evil spirit: Yeah, they must have cloned her! They had the same colour dress and the same flimsy white tulle over their faces. How was I supposed to know which one was the bride?

Satan: If they cloned her, they were all virgins! Just take any one of them!

Evil spirit: Well maybe they weren’t clones exactly. Maybe they were just her unmarried sisters and friends. Cousins even.

Satan:

Evil spirit:

Ah well, there goes religion. I’m grateful that the aesthetic need for veils has endured to keep me in work.