The origin of wedding veils

A wedding veil is an important accessory for a Christian bride, but do you know how the veil became an indispensable part of the weddings.

 

Ancient Romans and Greeks believed that there are evil spirits who would bring bad luck to a bride. So they, in order to protect the bride from these evil spirits, made her wear veils for the wedding.

 

 

Unlike the present day brides Roman brides used to wear very long flame red colour veils, while their Greek counterparts used to wear yellow veils. They were used to scare off the evil spirits.

 

The tradition of the father of the bride walking her down the aisle also links to the wedding veils. As we said the veils were used to hide the bride's face from the evil spirits, it was not easy for the bride to see through these veils. So her father would lead her to the aisle so that she won't trip on anything.

 

 

They also used another method to protect the bride by surrounding her with bridesmaids to confuse these evil spirits. The bride and the bridesmaids would wear clothes in the same colour but their veils will be shorter than the bride's.

 

 

In the case of arranged marriages, in those days the parents used veils to hide the bride's face as they could avoid the embarrassment of the groom, who will be seeing the bride for the first time, rejecting her. The veil will be lifted only at the end of the ceremony. 

 

During the medieval times, the veil became the symbol of the bride's chastity, purity, modesty, and obedience.

 

Even as people started to ignore these archaic customs, the wedding veil has not lost its importance. It has now become a fashion statement.

 

 

But unlike its archaic form the veils these days are available in a wide variety of fabrics that won’t cause any problem to the bride's vision.  Not just fabrics, the wedding veil is now available in many styles too such as bird cage, flyaways, blush, chapel, cathedral etc...

 

The brides these days don't blindly follow the tradition but select veil according to the design and fit of their wedding outfit.