Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Weddings: The Bride

I spent some time, before my wedding, contemplating what I should do about covering my head at our reception.

I thought about leaving my veil on- but it was fairly large, and I thought it would get in the way of dancing.  (As to why I still had my veil over my face on the way Out of our wedding- well, I was too distracted to remove it, and no one else noticed.  In fact, it turns out that my husband kissed me under the chuppah through the veil...)  

I considered going bareheaded for the reception, but that felt very strange and pretty wrong to me.  I'd been wearing some sort of head-covering (kippah/scarf/cap/etc) for 6+ years by that point (only last summer), and  being at a significant event without one- especially when there would be eating, brachot, and divrei Torah involved- did not feel appropriate at all, for me.  So I ruled that out pretty quickly.

I briefly also considered finding a white scarf or crocheting a cap or kippah for the reception.  This would have made putting a hair-do together rather complicated, but it was my default option for a while.  (This would have been one more project for an already DIY heavy wedding.  I made the centerpieces, kippot for our guests, and sort-of-matching kippot for our immediate families, besides starting and not finishing an atarah for my husband's tallis, which was our huppah.)

Then I went to a friend's wedding, who also wears kippot/small scarves.  Her sister had put together a scrap of the lace from her dress (removed during alterations) with a shiny hairclip, and she wore that in her hair as a  kippah during her reception.  When she offered to lend me some things they had gotten for their wedding and weren't going to need afterwards, I asked if I could borrow that as well.  She was happy to loan it, and I did indeed wear that all day- I had the hairdresser put it on when she did my hair, and put the full veil over it, and only removed the latter after the ceremony.  It gave me a great chance to enjoy having my hair out for that last day, and also feel like I was covering my head.
 Here it is under the veil, at the chuppah.
And here it is actually serving its function, during the dancing.  

What did you do with your head/hair at your wedding?

2 comments:

  1. I had a large shiny clip, smaller than kippah size, put in when the hairdresser did my hair (which was all up) and called that my head covering. Smaller than usual, but I wanted something that fit in.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wanted to say thanks for this. There is next to no discussion/inspiration online for brides who covered their head pre-wedding. I'm getting married in August, and I am currently planning to swap the veil for a kippah after the ceremony. I tried on my dress wearing my usual kippah and it looked great, so why not? It's who I am. The only question now is something dark that blends into my hair and looks barely there, something white/ivory to match the dress, or something colorful. But it took a lot of thought to decide on this. I never really pictured a bride in a kippah, because it's not common.

    ReplyDelete