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.



Mediæval Bæbes

I want you all to know about these amazing women, the Mediæval Bæbes. They sing so beautifully and you can buy their music to play on the stereo at the wedding party to get a very nice medieval mood. It will crawl under your skin like ripples of sound inside your mind and awaken the person within you of the past.

Me and my fiancée won't have medieval music all night - I think we love rock a little too much :) But after and in between the band playing we'll have a stereo playing a bit of medieval music. There is a special feeling about medieval music and these days more and more bands appear who harvest their inspiration from times long past.
Anyway check out theese women's website and music :)  http://www.mediaevalbaebes.com/

Fire Juggler

If you have a little extra money to spend on the wedding there's a lot of fun entertainment to be had.
On medieval fairs you will often find a fire juggler and he/she will probably not mind a wedding gig.
It will look very impressive in the evening when it's dark but you can also have them surprise your guests upon arrival to the party. The great jugglers won't just perform their dangerous tricks, they'll have this teasing cheeky attitude and they'll taunt and make jokes with the guests.

Jugglers were a common form of entertainment in the middle ages especially at the royal court, at big parties and weddings.

My Menu

Here is the great menu that the Golden Swan presented to us for our wedding. We wanted a buffet with a lot to chose from. The Danish people loves potatoes, but as the potato was unknown in Europe in the middle ages it can't be a part of the menu. I am a little excited to see the reaction of guests when I show them what's for dinner. :-)

A Medieval buffet with courses from the knight's table

Warm smoked salmon with herbs
Fresh cold smoked salmon with herbs
Cold smoked and cured herring in marinade
Cold smoked air dried ham.
Cold smoked air dried veal saussage

Cinnamon fried chicken
Fried gnaw bones with salsament
Duck in lady sauce
Lam in men's sauce
Roast smoked veil sausages with pickled red turnip
Coarse salad from the cabbadge garden
Cinnamon baked apple pie with rose cream
Cheese with grapes
Freshly baked coarse bread with strong mustard and butter

I am not certain if I translated it all properly but you will have to leave a comment and ask if you wonder about something.

The menu

First forgive me for long time it took me to write a new entry. My second end-of-the-semester examination is upon me and I have quite a lot of work until my vacation starts June the 7th.

Anyway: The food is a big part of the wedding day and thanks to both historians and experimental archaeology we have a pretty good knowledge of how the medieval family dined. I will find some recipes or cooking books you can buy if you want to read more or learn how to do it yourself.

The daily meal for the common man or peasant wasn't all that interesting. Soup, porridge and bread. Usually the farmsteads had a small garden where they grew cabbage, turnips and the like. If you were close to the sea fish was also a part of the diet and wild plants like berries and nuts would be gathered. The poor did eat meat too, but it was more precious than grain.

At a wedding or a party lots and lots of courses were served and when the guests couldn't eat any more they would barf to make room for more and eat on. That may seem like bad manners, but it wasn't considered so at the time.

A simple choice for the main course is roast piglet. It's a meal that looks very medieval and it tastes soo good :-) It will take a while to prepare but for the man who likes a good BBQ it's a dream.

The medieval kitchen wasn't as boring as one might think. You can make a lot of tasty dishes.
I will recommend you to check out Daniel Myers blog: http://medievalcookery.blogspot.com/ . He also has a website: http://www.medievalcookery.com/.

Have fun in the kitchen :)

Guestbook

It's always nice to be able to open the guest book years after the wedding and to read the warm well wishes of those who participated in your special day. There's plenty of possibilities to make the guest book fit the theme and give the guests an experience along the way.

An obvious idea is to make people write with a feather quill and ink. You can get a lot of different color feather pens if you have a color scheme to stick to.

As for the book, the leather bound journals look just right. You can get these books designed after you own wishes in several shops. The motifs on these books should of course be medieval, or you can get your names engraved in the leather.

 

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In the end I want to show you my guest book, which I bought at a museum store in Denmark. I haven't unwrapped it yet, but it is beautifully red and with a crouching lion on the cover.

You can also buy different shades of ink so you really can make the guest book fun and medieval-ish. :)

My invitation

I want to share the invitation I made for my wedding with you. I made the drawing from scratch and colored it too. Later I will print them on paper similar to what they used for the medieval manuscripts, which are also the inspiration for my design. As I have been drawing for many years it felt natural to do the invitations by hand, but there's a lot of fine alternatives on the internet if you don't feel like making it yourself. :)
Some of the white spaces are to be painted with gold, so they will look mere like the manuscripts made by the munks. But the gold can't be copied and printet very well so that will have to be applied each of the invitations.