Once upon a time, every bride knew more or less what she would wear on her head at her wedding. Young first-time brides wore veils, older or previously married women wore hats. If you got married in a judge’s chambers or at City Hall, you wore a small hat, no matter what your age or previous marital status. Period. The only questions lay in the length of the veil or trim on the hat.
The good news is that all that went out the window nearly fifty years ago. The even better news is that there are huge numbers of options now, from cathedral length veils for third-time brides to glorious hats for formal first-time brides to bare heads to wreaths to…well, nearly anything you can imagine putting on your head.
One popular option right now is the fascinator. Once upon a time that word meant a wooly knitted or crocheted scarf that covered the head, but that was when Queen Victoria was still around. Nowadays a fascinator is a decorative bit of whimsey worn in the hair. It can be elegant like this:
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