The bridal veil from the Roman flammeum to Queen Victoria's gown

The veil is perhaps the oldest element of European bridal dress. Long before the white gown became the norm, a bride could be recognised by her covered head. Over the centuries that light fabric changed colour, length and meaning, passing from the bright red of Roman weddings to the pure white lace of the Victorian age, and gradually acquiring religious, social and symbolic values.

The flammeum of Roman brides

In Rome the bride wore the flammeum, a veil of intense orange, like the colour of a flame, which covered her head and fell over her shoulders. Ancient authors linked it to the dress of the flaminica, the wife of the priest of Jupiter, who was forbidden to divorce: wearing it was therefore a wish for a stable marriage. Beneath the veil the hair was arranged in six braids, the seni crines, according to a very old custom.

The close connection between veil and wedding is reflected in the language. The Latin verb nubere, from which Italian derives «nubile» and English «nuptial», was used of a woman getting married, and traditional etymology links it precisely to the act of veiling oneself. Modern scholars debate the details, but for the ancients the connection was obvious: for a woman, to marry meant to take the veil before the groom.

The veil in the Bible and the liturgy

The biblical tradition also knows the bridal veil. In the book of Genesis Rebekah, seeing Isaac coming across the fields, takes her veil and covers herself. A little further on, the story of Jacob, who marries Leah believing he is marrying Rachel, has often been read as a deception made possible by the covered face. From this, according to tradition, comes the Jewish rite of the bedeken, in which the groom personally lowers the veil over the bride.

In early Christianity the veil also became a sign of consecration. Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, devoted a treatise to the question of the veiling of virgins, and in the liturgy the velatio referred both to the nuptial blessing and to the consecration of nuns, considered brides of Christ. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance noble brides often wore precious veils held in place by crowns or garlands.

Victoria's white

For centuries the colour of the wedding dress was not fixed. Brides wore their finest garment, often blue, red or embroidered with gold, and white was only one possibility among many. The turning point came on 10 February 1840, when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in a gown of white satin and a veil of Honiton lace, chosen partly to support English manufacture.

Images of the wedding circulated widely through prints and newspapers, and the white gown with a long veil became the model for the Victorian middle classes. White, an expensive colour to keep clean, signalled prosperity as well as purity. In the twentieth century cinema and magazines spread this style throughout the world, alongside different traditions, such as the red worn by Chinese brides and by many Indian brides.

From the flame-coloured flammeum to the white tulle of contemporary weddings, the veil has passed through more than two thousand years without ever disappearing. Each age has read something different into it, from the stability of marriage to modesty, from consecration to social prestige. This very capacity to change meaning while keeping the same form explains its extraordinary endurance.