The Veil & The Wedding Day

My sister was convinced that she wanted to look a bit different on her special day and after we found her beautiful lace dress we started discussing vintage accessories.

I found lots of the American wedding blogs particularly inspiring as they feature lots of stylish retro weddings. If you're interested check out Wedding Chicks, Jesi Haack Weddings and Project Weddings. We decided that a birdcage style vintage veil would look amazing with the dress and would be a traditional touch without looking 'too traditional'. We saw lots of great veils on the always inspiring Etsy but none of them were quite right, and after making my own fascinator I assured my sister I could make her one. (Always over-confident!!)

After discussing some designs she found a wonderful vintage broach for the veil base while she was buying vintage jewellry to go with the wedding dress. We had a number of fittings at various stages and quickly realised that we must have very different shaped heads as the veil pinned at an angle on me looked completely different on her. This made it very difficult to finish the veil without her around. So I decided to leave cutting the veil section to the right length until the night before the wedding. This was also due to the fact that the weight of the brooch meant we were struggling to pin it into her hair and I was hoping the hairdresser would work some magic and come up with a solution! Fingers crossed!

However as is often the way we ended up catching up with friends and relations who had gathered for the wedding the night before and after drinking too much I confidently insisted we could just sort it out on the day!

So on the morning of the wedding not only had the crisp sunshine of the day before been replaced by a heavy fog, but I started to panic about the fact that with just hours to go I still hadn't finished the veil and cake. No pressure then!

So I went to the barn with my soon to be brother-in-law and the groomsmen as they were delivering the decorations and helping to set up. It was quite a relief to see at least one completed project arrive all finished. We had used purple and silver Christmas baubles as both name settings and wedding favours. They looked beautiful and festive on the day but had involved a good few hours of writing on the baubles and arranging them in gift boxes to look like mini Christmas pressies (photos to follow). After a nervous half hour stacking and then re-stacking the stars on the cake I headed to the house where my sister was getting ready. Luckily a few glasses of bubbles meant that she was showing no signs of nerves. And the fabulous hairdresser Sharon Wilkes-Burt managed to miraculously secure the veil with only a few expertly placed pins. Then the dreaded moment when I had to cut the veil to the desired shape. The nervous hairdresser and photographer looked on (being photographed while taking scissors to the veil wasn't helping!) and I hoped for the best, well aware that there wasn't a back up plan if I screwed it up. With a few pins and a few frayed nerves we finally got there.

My sister looked truly beautiful on her big day (she actually dropped over 2 dress sizes for the wedding!) and although making things for the wedding was hard work at times, it was a great privilege to be such an integral part of the celebration. And I learnt some important craft lessons along the way!

(Hopefully I'll have some better photos of the veil when the official photos arrive)