Making The Wedding Veil

We had researched wedding veils and how to make them. Now, we needed to get the materials. We traveled to San Francisco to visit Britex, a magnificent fabric store with four floors of cloth and a large selection of lace. While there we purchased a remnant of 120 inch wide diamond white tulle net. This was a softer, finer tulle than the kind we were using for decorations and cost $12 for a little less than a yard. We would not only use this fine tulle for the veil but also for the cap sleeves we planned to add to the wedding gown.

VERY expensive lace!

We loved the look of the fancy ornamented lace we saw but edging our veil with any of them would’ve run the cost up out of reach. We began to understand why veils are often so expensive! The circumference of the average fingertip length veil is between three and four yards and the lace we liked best was $35 per yard. That would be $140 for the lace alone! So, rather than purchase several yards of this lace for the veil, we bought one yard to use on the outside edge of the cap sleeves. We also bought a yard of matching narrow lace to trim the inside edge of the cap sleeves at $17.50 per yard. Now we could still enjoy the lace without breaking the bank.

This left us without lace for the veil, though. We returned home and visited our local fabric store. There in the “dollar” bins was a prettyish kind of ruffled lace on a spool -- 5 yards for $2.50. Obviously it was not as fine as the gorgeous stuff we’d seen at Britex, but it did meet several of our requirements. It was approximately 3 inches wide, had a floral motif, and was very inexpensive. We bought two spools and carefully snipped off the gathered edge of the lace, which neatly turned it into flat lace.

The lace was still not quite ready for our veil, though. To dim the antiseptic white we cut several swatches and dipped them in different teas until we arrived at a shade that matched our diamond white tulle. For those not familiar with the term “diamond white” -- this is the color shade between bright white and ivory, according to some definitions. Speaking for myself it is a white that leans more toward silver or grey rather than ivory. At any rate, it is often called “off white” and it complimented my daughter’s complexion much better than bright white.

To achieve the shade of white we wanted we steeped a standard teabag of jasmine tea for three minutes then soaked the lace in it for two minutes. We squeezed out the excess tea and laid the lace out flat to dry. Once it was dry, we ironed it and wrapped it back on the spool until it was time to sew it on the veil.

I cut a large “egg shaped” oval from the fine tulle in the length we wanted for the veil. I gathered the narrow end and pinned this raw edge to a four inch wide tulle wrapped comb. You will want to sew the tulle to the wrong side of the comb so that when you turn the comb under to put it in the bride’s hair, the tulle will fall nicely back from the comb and the raw edge of material will not show. It took several adjustments to get the tulle positioned on the comb properly, and we tried it on my daughter a few times to get it right, then I sewed it firmly onto the comb. I intended to finish the raw edge under the comb by tacking it down flat once we finished the decorative parts of the veil but I never quite got around to it. Thankfully, this is a detail no one but myself would notice.

Inexpensive lace and a simple embellishment

Now that the veil itself was attached to the comb, I added the lace edging. I lined up the bottom edge of the lace with the bottom edge of the veil and pinned it in place. Then, following the contours of the lace, I stitched the upper edge of the lace to the veil using a simple back stitch and silver silk thread. We did not trim the tulle to the stitching but rather left the layer of tulle as backing for the lace to make a sturdy foundation when my daughter added the bead accents. She used beads very sparingly on the veil so that they added sparkle but didn't compete with the tasteful simplicity of her gown. It also saved her a lot of work.

We worked on the veil over several weeks, sewing for just half an hour each day until it was done. My main concern was not to prick myself and get blood on the fabric. I strongly suggest using a thimble for this work!

Final cost of materials for our wedding veil amounted to less than $25 and we had a lot of tulle, lace, and beads left over. In fact, for that amount of money I could have made two veils. Granted, the lace was not the highest quality but it looked lovely and served its purpose. All in all, making the wedding veil was time well spent.

It's not necessary to spend a lot of money to get a lovely veil. We were very pleased with how ours turned out.