Weddingbee Blog

It’s no secret that I love veils. Miss Dragon told y’all yesterday that I shared my obsession with her and tried to help her pick one out. My wedding dress came with a matching veil, but it’s a cathedral-length veil, and I don’t picture myself wearing it for the ceremony. (After all, I don’t really think a veil bustle is possible.) So I set out to DIY a reception veil: a fingertip mantilla veil. I started with this lace from Fabric Hut67 on Etsy.

The wrong side of the lace—oops! / Personal photo

Then, I had to trim the lace so it was a single piece of lace, and not doubled like in the above photo. I rough cut it out (right side of the photo) and then cut it closer to the actual lace on a second cut-through (left side of the photo).

Then, I had some ivory tulle; I didn’t measure it, but I believe it was about a metre (standard width), slightly more maybe, and I doubled it and cut it down the fold so I had one piece of tulle.

Then, I doubled that:

Then, I literally just rounded off the four corners of the tulle to make a long skinny oval. It was freehand, there was no pattern, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t super even. That’s OK, though! It worked out. It was just a giant single-layer oval/circle.

Then came pinning. Pinning lace (or anything, for that matter) to tulle is difficult. I worked in small bits, doing about five or six “points” of the lace at a time and then sewing it. I pinned the tulle behind the lace, so in the photo the good side is facing down, with the tulle pinned on top of the wrong side. I pinned around the points of the lace, and then also across the bottom of the tulle where it ended around the lace.

Then, I carefully (ahem, I tried to be careful) sewed around the points of the lace and the bottom border of the tulle using clear sewing thread. Using clear thread is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my limited sewing experience. You can’t see it (which is the point), which makes it hard as hell to sew with. So while I thought this project could be knocked out in one night while Fiancee Eagle was working a late shift at the hospital…in reality it took me two nights, so around five to six hours of SEWING. Not fun. I would flip it over every once in a while to look at my progress and remind myself why I was doing this.

After I was finished, I sewed on a basic clear veil comb with the same horribly annoying clear thread, and I had myself a reception veil! (I didn’t even think about measuring length, but it worked out to be about fingertip length.)

A very tired and shiny Miss Eagle

All personal photos

I think the veil will work perfectly for the reception—everyone keeps telling me I’ll eventually want to take it off (and they’re probably right), but I love veils. And I have no problem being a two-veil bride!

Did any of your DIYs take much longer than expected? Would you DIY your wedding veil? What are your opinions on a reception veil?