My Fascination With Twisty Crowns Continues

I went to an outdoor wedding a while ago- a very good friend from college got married.  It was a picnic-style wedding.  So I was aiming for something that looked really festive, but wasn't too formal, and would put up with dancing, eating, hanging out, outside.  Most of my coverings are pretty stable, honestly, but it meant that adding sparkly things kept on only by bobby pins didn't have quite the appeal that it usually does for me.  Here's what I came up with:

It's made up of: 1 square scarf, folded into a triangle (blue with stripes) , 1 rectangular scarf (purple pattern), and 1 small square scarf (light green), roughly folded into a band.  

I put on the base scarf, and left the tails dangling.  Then I twisted the purple rectangle and the green square around each other, in the same manner as I do the tails for the twisty crown, (Wrapunzel has a how-to here) so that the middles of each scarf were together.  I tied that around my head, using up all the green scarf, but leaving tails on the purple one. 

I then twisted one blue triangle tail with one purple rectangle tail in the same fashion, and wrapped it over my head, behind the purple-and-green twist.  The purple reached about half-way around, the blue reached all the way.  I tucked in the blue tightly, and used it to secure the purple.  I then repeated the same thing with the other side, tucking under the first blue-and-purple combo.  I threw in a bobby pin in the middle to help keep things secure.  

I then added a small black and white headband to set off the two crowns.  

The whole thing stood up to dancing, pincnicking, hula hooping, and 3 young relatives.  

More Wedding-Wear

I went to a lot of weddings this summer.  So now that wedding season is just about over (at least around here)- here's what I put together for another family wedding.  It's a bit quieter in the shiny front than many of my previous wedding choices, but brighter in actual colors.  The skirt I wore was a mixture of greens, which the accent scarf picked up just right.

 That's a dark pink pashmina, with a small light-green accent scarf.  Something about the roof of the semi-outdoor area where we took these made everything very pink.  I've already filtered these to make them less pink, if you can believe it...

A Twisty Crown at a Wedding

So I've been better about drafting some posts than putting them up.  And now that the holidays are starting to reach their close, I hope to be back to a regular posting schedule, finally- with texts, reflections, and all that jazz, along with "what I wore" style posts.  But first, you'll be working your way through a few wedding/festive coverings.  This one, and variations thereon, have been a shabbos, wedding, and yontif favorite for me, lately.

A while back, I showed some photos of a twisty crown, a dressy but not over-the-top style, good for folks who like a little height, but nothing too overwhelming.  Here's another time I used the same style, and produced something dressier.

 It's the same thing, with the only addition of a small headband in front of the twists.  It gives a little shine, and sets them off, so they're more visible.  Pair that with some makeup, jewelry, and dress clothes, and it made for excellent wedding-guest gear.

I just should remember to finally take the tag off that scarf...

Being a Wedding Guest, and a Little on Cultural Sensitivity

 A few weeks ago, we went to my husband's cousin's wedding.  This is a pretty wedding-full summer for us: 5 in total, plus one we missed.  This was the second of the bunch.

 Pinning a necklace over the front of my covering is still my default for turning a covering into something wedding-worthy.

I'm always tempted to use something with a drop or a bangle in the front, evoking a tikka/bindi (Indian forehead decorations, which seem to evolve out of religious decorations/caste markers, but seem to be part of secular fashion as well). But as as pale an Ashkenazi as I am, it feels culturally inappropriate- something akin to orientalism.  So while I tried out a necklace with more oomph, and also a bunch of bits that dangled onto my forehead, I decided against.  I didn't take a picture- but even if I did, I might well be uncomfortable putting it online.  What do you think?

 This pin from my grandmother (she was getting rid of it- it's missing one or two of its rhinestones) has become pretty much my favorite pin for adding some sparkle to my scarves.

This scarf is quite long, so even with my tails both wrapped over my head and tied again in back, I had some tails left over.  The scarf is from the dollar store, and is somewhat stretchy.  It's also just a smidge see-through, and I suppose some folks might feel more comfortable with it wrapped around twice, but it didn't seem so transparent as to bother me.

How do you cover for attending a wedding, or other formal event?  Where are the cultural boundaries in what you will or won't wear? 

How's That for A Hat (or Veil)?

The article this links to isn't much- but take a look at the bride's covering(s).  How's that for a hat?  Or a veil?  Or a hat+veil?  Take a look particularly at the 5th and, most clearly, 7th photographs.

More Wedding-Wear

Here's one of those adaptations for a slightly-smaller than I'd like scarf- layering another one underneath, for some added inches.   The ends of that other scarf also gave me some bulk in the bun area of this headcovering. It's a little less out-going than my usual wedding-wear, but this was a wedding where we were closer to the groom's parents than to the folks getting married, and in a community I was quite unfamiliar with- so I decided to go a little less dramatic than usual.  I still like how it came out.

This was a wedding in a community that was significantly to the right of my own, or of the communities where I am usually a  guest.  I considered pulling my scarf further forward than I'd usually wear it- but eventually chose not to.  Regardless, it was pretty clear that I wasn't "from around here"- I think there were only one or two other women wearing tichels at all- most of the local married women wore wigs.  Regardless- I never know how much to adapt my own practice to respect local minhag (custom- perhaps not a strong enough word), and how much to hold fast to my own practice.

Also even such restrained color as this is was more than most of the women were wearing.  When did black and white (mostly black) become a uniform for women too?

Historical Head-Covering: Yemenite Wedding Headdresses

We're off to another wedding tonight, so in its honor, here's a post about Yemenite Jewish wedding head coverings.  These are much more exciting than (the future post of) what I wore to a wedding...  Enjoy!

When I started to research Yemenite Jewish head coverings, I fell into the trap of presuming that there was one standard Yemenite Jewish style of dress.  Instead, I found that the images in my mind, particularly of Yemenite bridal headdresses are actually the way that brides in Sana'a were dressed, and that different regions had different customs.  The ethnic diversity of Jewish customs in fact was even more diverse than I had set out to demonstrate.  So take all of this as a general statement, rather than a description of all the details of how Jewish women all over Yemen used to dress for their weddings.

There was even one set of photographs that came up again and again, showing tishbuk lulu, the Sana'a wedding headdress, on a variety of websites- apparently the standard photo of a Jewish Yemenite bride.  These headdresses are frequently also bedecked with flowers and rue leaves.

 In contrast to these couple of extraordinarily elaborate photos, some more searching revealed others with very different styling.  Instead of a high, pointed headdress, some of the other regions seem to show brides with hood-like headdresses, or with decorations that come down onto the forehead.

Thanks for this set of photos goes to http://www.hennabysienna.com/yemen.html.  The same page also has a historical picture of Sana'a's wedding headdress.

I also found the interesting note that new mothers also wore (at least in some part(s) of Yemen) a headdress similar to that of a bride.

This has all been internet research- I hope to have a chance to do more formal research and to share it with you, at some point in the future.

Wedding Wear

Finally, what I wore for the wedding we went to on Sunday.  The "pin a necklace on your head" trick for dressing things up worked beautifully.  (The necklace was a gift from my mother- possibly a tag sale find.)  This time, I bobby-pinned it both behind the ears (at the ends of the necklace) and in front of the ears, which provided really solid security.  The "crown" part of my scarf came off a few times during the dancing- but the necklace stayed in place.  (At the previous wedding this summer, I didn't put in the extra pins, partially because that necklace wasn't ammenable to such pinning, and it came off a few times.)

We're going to another wedding next Thursday night- we'll see what I can come up with for that one.

What is a Shterntikhl? Historical Head Coverings, Part 1

We're off to a wedding this afternoon.  In honor of it, I thought I'd share this piece about fancy head coverings from the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

The fanciest headdress of Polish Jewish women was the shterntikhl and its variation inLithuania known as the binda. Worn only on special occasions, this was an expensive article, decorated with precious stones that emphasized the owner’s status. It was first used during the late eighteenth century and became popular in the nineteenth; some families possessed one (though it was no longer worn) until the interwar period. Yisroel Aksenfeld’s short novel Dos shterntikhl (1862) notes that “on Simḥat Torah, when wealthy women go to kiss the Torah, they wear shterntikhlekh.” The shterntikhl was composed of two bands with precious stones and pearls sewn onto them, encircling the head. Both bands were stiff and sewn above the forehead. The upper part was usually simple and formed a diadem, while the lower part, with a zigzag edge, encircled the face closely and reached beyond the ears. Long earrings accompanied this type of headdress. A more modest version was worn as late as the early twentieth century—a stiff diadem placed over the forehead. This was a band of material lavishly decorated with embroidery and pearls, which used ribbons to tie it in the back. 

From http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Dress (If you check out the link, there's a great picture of a shterntikhl- it's the first picture in the entry.)

The  article describes a variety of different sorts of head coverings from different eras, and for different occasions.  I look forward to sharing some more snippets from this article, as well as finding some more information to share about the way that some of our ancestors dressed.  This one certainly seems festive, and involves less fuss (but also less creativity) than what I will put together for a head covering, when going to a wedding...

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?