A special touch - Making the veil

I was pretty sure I'd want a veil from the beginning.  I wanted something that wasn't over-the-top, but enough to accentuate my dress and offer just a little bit of cover and modesty with a strapless dress and updo.

I decided that an elbow-length veil would do the job, something with simple trim.  You can buy a veil like that for probably under $100.  Or you can get one for about $2 and a little elbow grease.  You can guess my choice, haha.  Besides, it was another opportunity to personalize my bridal wear and practice some new techniques!

Although my husband saw the gown in pieces and in process, he never saw it on me.  He also was absolutely not allowed to see the veil other than as a pile of tulle on my lap while I beaded.  He wasn't to see that part until our wedding day, since some of the surprise of the gown was lost since he walked past the sewing room every day.

I found some pretty leightweight tulle at Jo-Ann's and bought about a yard and a half, just guessing what it would take to reach to my hips, being generous.  I checked out lots of websites on how to make your own veil and decided to use my fabric ruler to figure out how long I wanted the veil to be at the bottom of its curved shape, and at the edges before it turned back up towards the comb.  I drew this out onto paper, and carefully smoothed my tulle out over it.

Since the tulle was cheap, I went ahead and started cutting.  It was shifty and hard to see whether it was lined up right if it got un-aligned, but I was patient and got it to work.  I used my rotary cutter to get the smoothest line I could.

The first iteration was a little to "corner-y" where the curve at the back turned up, so I smoothed that out some by cutting the corners flatter, making it less sharp of a turn.  Actually, it's a lot like what I do when I'm cutting my hair at home; if the edges around my face look too sharp, I taper them with the same sort of change.

Anyway, a few shots at that and I had a nice shape.  I made it longer than I needed it to be so that I could gather it into the comb and then cut it, since it's always easier to cut off more later rather than too soon.  To tell where to put the comb on the veil, I had to figure out where I was probably going to want to put the comb on my head, so the length would fall correctly.  That was a bit of a guess, since I hadn't yet decided on my hairdo.  But I figured I'd do an updo to avoid curls inevitably falling out, and that it would look best sitting at a certain height on my head, so I went of of that, allowing a little extra length for the veil to curve over the bulk of that imaginary hairdo.

I figured out where the gathering and comb would need to be to get the right height, and stitched through the tulle horizontally with a bright thread, then pulled it tight and held it against the comb to spread it out to the right width.  With some clear monofilament thread I'd gotten for this purpose, I sewed the tulle to the comb, following the directions in this tutorial.

Once I had that all set, it was time to bead it.  This blog had the best instructions I found on beading, and are what I followed--but with "rainbow-clear" seed beads of all the same size.  I bought two little boxes of them, and went through all of one and part of the other.

I beaded watching Orange is the New Black, I beaded while waiting for walk-in appointments and chatting with staff at work, I beaded while watching more TV, I beaded in my sleep... until I had beaded all the way around!

Then the veil was done!

Just kidding.  I stored the veil away for a few months while I worked on the dress, and a couple weeks before the wedding pulled it back out to test with the hairdo I'd decided on.  It just felt... lacking.  I wanted more body and a little more sparkle.

So I added another layer.  It was a very similar process to add it onto what was already there, but instead of beading around the outer edge, I added a little sparkle over all of it with beads here and there across the whole thing.  I laid the tulle out on the dark carpet, set the tiny beads on the tulle, and tied each one on with a double-knot of clear thread.  That was it!  It only took an extra two and a half hours to add that part.  It was worth it... check it out!  (These photos are by Heather Danielle Photography, 2015.)