Bride's headdress

The bride's headdress was made of multicoloured linen flowers, beads and wires at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. These decorations are attached to a semi-circular hat made of linen, with a dozen or so long coloured ribbons at the back. On a bridal evening, the bridesmaids and the bride wore such a headdress before the wedding. It sometimes happened that brides borrowed a headdress made earlier by another bride and added new decorations or ribbons to freshen it up before the wedding. Originally, a garland was worn on the wedding day to testify to the bride's innocence in the Lublin region. At the end of the 19th century, garlands were replaced by the decorative headdresses described here. In the inter-war period, brides had a veil decorated with a garland of myrtle. At that time, a maiden who had not preserved her virginity could not walk down the aisle wearing a garland or veil. The rule was commonly observed and watched over by representatives of the older generation who had the right to remove the garland or veil from the head of such a maiden in church.

The bride had the headgear described above put on the wedding morning by the senior bridesmaid, and it was the main decoration of her outfit. It was removed from the bride's head during the unveiling and capping ceremony that symbolically introduced the girl to the group of married women. The replacement of the wedding headdress with a cap or a shawl, performed by the headmistress, was a visible sign of marriage. From that moment on, a woman could no longer leave the house with a bare head. Her life changed; she moved into her husband's house and gained new responsibilities that she could not have performed before, such as the right to bake bread.