Why do brides wear veils?

You will be told the veil hid the bride from evil spirits, or from a groom who might bolt if he saw her face in an arranged match. Neither story has a source. What the sources actually show is stranger and better: a yellow veil borrowed from a priestess, a linen cloth over two heads, a Bible story about the wrong sister, and a queen who was buried in hers.

Rome: the flame-colored veil

The Roman bride's veil was the flammeum. Pliny the Elder, listing the honors of colors, says the yellow he calls luteus held the oldest, reserved entirely for women in their bridal veils.¹ He compared the shade to egg yolk; scholars still argue whether that means yellow or something pinker.² The important detail is who else wore it. The flammeum was also the garment of the Flaminica Dialis, the wife of Jupiter's priest, whose marriage could never be dissolved, so on a bride it was read as an auspicious charm, a wish for a marriage like hers.² Not a shield against demons. A costume borrowed from the one Roman wife who could not be divorced.

The Middle Ages: one cloth, two heads

In the English Sarum rite the couple knelt together during the nuptial Mass "with a fine linen cloth laid over their heads," a custom recorded at the wedding of Richard and Isabella in 1321.³ That cloth is still in the Catholic rite. The current Order of Celebrating Matrimony allows, before the nuptial blessing, "the blessing and placing of the lazo or the veil," a tradition kept by Hispanic and Filipino families, in which "a veil is placed over the head of the wife and the shoulders of the husband, thus symbolizing the bond that unites them."⁴ The blessing calls it "a symbol of the indissoluble union."⁵ A veil over both of you is older, in the church, than a veil over one.

Why the groom looks first

At an Ashkenazi Jewish wedding the groom veils the bride himself, in a ceremony called the bedeken, just before they go under the chuppah.⁶ It is custom, not law, and the reason given is Genesis 29. Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and woke the morning after the wedding beside her sister: "When morning came, it was Leah!"⁷ So the groom looks at the bride before he covers her face, to confirm she is the woman he means to marry.⁶⁸ Chabad adds the gentler meaning: the veil says the groom "is not solely interested in the bride's external beauty, which fades with time; but rather in her inner beauty which she will never lose."⁸

Then, for centuries, a bonnet

Before the nineteenth century, British brides mostly married in bonnets; a lace veil was a luxury few could buy.⁹ Handmade lace "was a status symbol that demonstrated wealth and position."¹⁰ Then Victoria married in 1840 in white satin "trimmed with orange-flower blossoms" and "a beautiful veil of Honiton lace," and by mid-century "the veil and orange blossom wreath were the essential accessories."¹¹⁹ The flowing veil came into vogue with the train in the mid-1870s.¹² Victoria wore her lace at her children's christenings and sat for a portrait in 1847 "wearing my dear wedding veil"; when she died in 1901, a lady of the household saw her laid out with "her wedding veil over her face."¹³

One royal veil ended up in Washington. On 10 May 1881 Princess Stéphanie of Belgium wore a hundred by a hundred and twenty-three inches of handmade lace, its border carrying twenty-one coats of arms, to marry Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria; the veil is now in the Smithsonian.¹⁴

Why your mother cares

The Victorians attached the purity meaning, the "blushing, pure bride" the V&A's curator describes, and the mid-century white wedding carried it to your grandmother in yards of lace.⁹ If your mother saved hers, that is the object she is offering when she asks whether you will wear one. Wear it, or wear it as a cathedral-length thing over both of you at the altar the way the 1321 couple did, and tell her which century you picked.