Weddingbee Blog

I am now officially fully-dressed for our wedding. Dress, shoes, jewelry, hair, makeup, and finally I can add to the list: my veil!

Technically I’ve had the veil 95% done for about 3 weeks now, but I’m finally over the last hurdle of completing it. As I mentioned in my previous veil post, I decided I wanted a fingertip length veil with thin pencil edging, and after sticker shock at the bridal store, I wanted to make my own. So with the help of the very awesome Weddingbee reader edb, here’s how things went down.

First, cutting the tulle. I bought 2 yards of 108″ ivory tulle at Jo-Ann—I could have bought waaaay less. And I certainly didn’t need the 108″ wide tulle, either. I also knew I had a veil pattern from an impulse buy a while back at a 99 cent pattern sale, but stupidly never checked that it was indeed the one I wanted. Of course it was not the right one, but after 3 separate Jo-Ann’s didn’t have the right one in stock, I decided to wing it and modify the pattern I did have.

So I took over our guest room and attempted to keep the cats at bay since they seem unnaturally attracted to sewing pattern paper (and probably tulle, too):

(ingredients: lots of tulle, wrong pattern, rotary cutter, and computer to look up what the heck I’m doing)

Even though I had what I needed, I had put off actually making the veil for a really long time. I think I was afraid of cutting the tulle. Silly, right? Anyhow, in an attempt to not take over our entire house with wedding-ness and clear out the guest room, I decided this had to get done and started modifying the pattern.

(You can see the tulle pinned to the pattern line that I drew, to make it longer, narrower, and hopefully have a cascade effect)

What I wanted for my veil: slightly longer than fingertip length (50″), narrower than average so as not to have inordinate amounts of poufiness at the comb, and a cascading/waterfall effect-thingy down the sides. The pattern was for 72″ wide tulle but as you can see I pinned mine narrower, at about 56″ wide (total - which means folded in half like it is here, it was 28″ wide). I picked that number randomly. After I had the tulle cut out, I headed over to do the edging with Ellie, an incredibly nice reader—and a really great blogger herself, at Wedding For Two (she made her veil at the same time, which you can read about in this post)—who offered to help me do the edging on my veil with her serger!

(Ellie rocking the serger)

The serger left the perfect thin embroidered edge on the tulle all the way around:

(The tulle was ivory and the serger thread white, but no one will notice!)

Then I followed Mrs. Taffy’s tutorial about gathering, using bias tape, and hot gluing it all to the comb. The glue was barely dry as I hastily pulled my hair back and stuck the comb on top of my head.

(from the back)

While I was really happy with the veil length and width, I didn’t love the weird pointy angle thing it was doing instead of ’cascading’, and all the gathers seemed to end up bunched around my face!

(See how it looks poufy on the sides?)

The first problem was easily solved - because of static, the veil was sticking to me and causing weird draping, so I hung it in the bathroom while I showered (to steam it), then used a dryer sheet to prevent so much static. The second bunchy problem is what has held this post up so long! I figured I needed to regather the tulle at the top of the comb, and I was avoiding redoing it all. So it sat in my closet for 3 weeks. When I pulled the veil out last night to look at the gathering and finally tackle this, I realized that it’s actually gathered fine but it just gets pushed to the sides! Score. So with the help of a tiny little dots of glue to secure the folds in place on the comb, it was a really quick fix!

(In my Sunday best to model the veil )

Et voila! My veil! I’m really pleased with it: it was fairly easy, very inexpensive, and although I still sometimes lust over veils with lace edging when I see photos like Mrs. Cheeseburger’s beautiful wedding teaser photo, I think this will suit my dress excellently!

Cost breakdown:

• Pattern I used as jumping off point: $0.99
• 2 yards of 108″ ivory tulle: $2.50 (with 50% off coupon)
• 2-pack of plastic combs at Jo-Jo-Ann’sJo-Ann’s: $4.15 (with 40% off coupon)
• Pencil-edging: bribing Ellie with a plate of cheesecake-marbled brownies
• I already had the bias tape and hot glue gun/glue so didn’t count those in the total.

Total cost: $7.64 + brownies. I’d say that’s a pretty good deal!

Have you ever let a project sit for weeks because you dreaded finishing it, only to discover it wasn’t that bad?