Medieval hairdos for medium long hair - by Lillith moon

Youtube is a bride's treasure chest when it conserns guides to do your hair. That is the wonder of this computerized world, so much information a couple of links away. I love these guides to a medieval knot inspired updo, and decided that I wanted to post it. It is the beautiful Lillith Moon, who has made the instructions. So here it goes:

Hope some of these may inspire you, for your weddingday :)

Danish National museum's medieval Collection

Today I went to the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen to prepare for the winter finals. The semester is at an end, and so is the course on Early Bronze Age and and Neolitikum (late Stone Age.)
While I was there I saw their medieval collection as well as I know they have a bridal crown. It's not a particularly big exibition but I enjoyed it immensly.
I am excited to show you some pictures from it, especially of the engagement rings.

I love the one on the right with the man and the woman holding eachother. The second one from the left features two hands coming together and is a fairly common motive from around 1200-1500.
The bridal crown is magnificent found under the floor in a Jytlandian church. Presumably it is from 1525 and was worn by a wooden Idol of Mary. Sometimes the churches would have a bridal crown that the brides getting married could borrow in case they couldn't afford their own. Maybe this one have been such a crown:

Another object worth mentioning are the luxurious drinking horns. I am not sure for what event they were intended but surely it could be a wedding:

I really love museums. Being surrounded by all these old treasures takes me right back in time. I also like looking at all the weapons and oversized swords. I am hoping that Robert comes to the wedding with a sword in his belt :)

I have a lot of pictures and I'll be making an entry with more of the gleaming rings for you :) Happy new year - The Medieval Bride

Christmas Wedding

In the spirit of Christmas I want to give you a little collection of photos of what a christmas wedding might look like. If you have collected rosehips in the autumn you can dry them and stick them in hollow pieces of birch trunk. Like in the picture below, a raw wooden table might be enough to give a medieval feel, if you prefere modern plates and utensils. Red fabric napkins will look well with the rosehips. Any medieval wedding will be complete with candles and in the darkness of winter the warm glow will be soothing. Naked branches from the garden may also decorate the venue.

You can spread things like apples, cinnamon, nuts, pine cones, spruce along the tables. I also found this wedding dress for groom and bride from Historic-costumes.eu in true christamas colors:

Junam Flaming Design

A couple of golden rings with a red stone would be appropriate and perhaps a floral wreath with red flowers:



The Honey Comb

Have a very merry chrismas you all :-) 

Flower wreaths from Etsy

There's a lot of beatutiful flower wreaths on the internet, that looks like a mix of modern and medieval, if you worry about keeping the flowers fresh all day. Of course you can go down to your local florist and I am sure they can make someting amasing. But there are alternatives and I would like to show them to you:

The bright one:

MotifCaprice

The forest wreath:

Whichgoose

The fantasy wreath:

Gardensofwhimsy

The classic white bridal wreath:

BeSomethingNew

 The rosy wreath: 

The HoneyComb

Arn the knight templar: Cecilia's hair

I was watching the first Arn - the templar knight, the other evening. I do like that movie, although the book is far better. Anyway I can see that you often come to this blog looking for medieval wedding hair. Obviously a movie cannot provide us historically accurate hair styles, but they can inspire us and as a lot of movies takes pride in historical clothing, they also try to copy the hair dos of the period. Cecilia, the heroine, has a couple of hair styles that I could really see at a wedding.

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The braided bun above is beautiful. Medieval paintings are full of smal buns of braided hair, although I have never seen one placed in the back of the head. It requires a great amount of hair to make it that big, but I am sure hairdressers have their tricks if you want something similar. It reminds me a bit of this Jessica Alba picture:

This very artistic braided and curled hair lokks very much like a fairy tale princess. This elaborate style is more common in the renaissance or in Italy 15th century while nortern Europe still are in the middle ages. The Arn movie takes place in the 12th century if I remember correctly. From the paintings of that century this next hair style is the one that fits the best:

This simple and flattering hair do is the one that appeals the most to me. You can easily wear a wreath or a crown with it. The long loose wavy style can be seen in manuscripts like the Codex Manesse:

Hope you found these three examples helpful :-)

Medieval crazy women's hats

The hats worn by rich women during the Middle Ages were very artistic and complex. If you want to know more about the many types I suggest you visit http://www.kats-hats.co.uk/ . Here you can order custom made medieval hats, and read about them. A lot of the pictures in this entry are from that website.
In an earlier entry I wrote about the hair do and showed a couple of pictures of hats, this will be about hats only.

The Hennin was a tall construction and could be formed like a cone, two horns or just a tall hat. Often a white veil was attached to it and I reckon it belongs primarily to the 15th century. When wearing a hennin the hair would rarely show.

To show you some of the reconstruction of these I have a few examples from http://www.kats-hats.co.uk/

 

There also were a heart shaped and a two horned hennin:

 

And here reconstructed:

 

There were a lot of other types but the two others that I would like to show you here are the Toque (12th-13th century) and the Crispinette (1300-1500) The Toque is a bit less pompous than the Hennin and looks more like a normal hat with or without a veil.

The crispinette (or caul) is often worn by movie medieval princesses such as Princess Isabelle in "Brave Heart" or princess Amidala in "Star Wars" (okay not medieval movie, but still). It consisted of golden nets around two buns of hair on each side of the head.

Now, finding a place to get such a hat or to make it yourself might be quite a project. I think the hats are beautiful, yet a little crazy and I am not sure I would like to wear one for my entire wedding day. It is fun to see what you considered to be beautiful in those days compared to the ideals we live by today. So if you really want to be the bride that goes all the way then one of these designs might be what you want, if not, well then you can sit, smile and wonder about these creative and special hats. It was a time unlike no other, and the female headdress is one of the finest testimonies to this statement.



The bride's hair

The wedding day was one of the rare occasions when a woman could let down her hair. Often flowers would be braided into it or she wore a wreath of flowers to symbolise fertility and beauty. The bridal crown was an expensive alternative and after the wedding the bride's hair would be covered with a hat or veil.

Here are some examples of hair accesseories or hairdos

There are a couple of things one can do to look medieval:

1. The larger the forehead the more beautiful you were considered to be. Women plucked their hair and eyebrows to get the perfect look, that's why sometimes the woman look balled in the painting of the time. You can do with just combing your front hair back.

1470


  

2. braiding your hair will also add to the medieval vibe. There are some very artistic examples of braiding in the medieval times.

1420 Italia

 

3. A headband of fabric or metal will also make a nice contribution. If you want some inspiration, the character Eowyn from the Lord of the Rings has some beautiful ones. Hats and veils were very diverse in the medieval and you can really make some crazy types.



1460



 

So that was a lot of pictures with a lot of thoughts on how to do your hair on the big day. Personally I am probably going to go with the very natural loose hair and a golden band over my forehead.