Reveiling Yourself: How to Wear Hijab as a Bride on Your Wedding Day

This is me at my wedding as promised, I provided a picture!

Girls, I'm not going to lie i have been so backlogged with blogposts that I could probably drown in all of the ideas, projects and blog related posts I have to do. However, I will say that this blog keeps me sane and the audience keeps me jolly! I never regret a moment spent towards blogging, especially when I get to write posts with advice which benefit other sisters.

This of course is another blogpost about one of the hottest topics internationally and which I assume will never be a discussion that will die down. How do you stay true to your hijab on the biggest day of your life, your wedding? A sister requested this advice post/vlog, oh gosh, I'd say over a month ago and I kept pushing it to the back burner. Truth be told I only did that because I had so much to say about this topic that I was a little intimidated at the amount of things I'd have to write about or talk about. I was also afraid that I would forget integral parts of this discussion, but insha'Allah, I have mustered up enough courage to explain how to keep it real on your wedding day.

Note: I'd like to thank the sister who has been super supportive and patient with me waiting on this advice post. I hope she doesn't hate me. And, as compensation I would request all of my readers worldwide to make dua for this sister and her husband, May Allah swt give them a long life together with love, mutual understanding, honesty, respect and imaan. For when you have these components in your marriage then it's nearly impossible to have an imperfect marriage, insha'Allah. Ameen.

On with the topic!!! The video I have created is a little vague but hopefully this blogpost will compliment where I ran short of time in my video.

Your wedding is the most important day in your life, because for many of us it's the one day we've been looking forward to our entire lives, the perfect wedding with the perfect man. It's hard to say when, where or how this ideal wedding dream begins, but by the time you get married it evolves into a celebration of a lifetime --- and it deserves to be just as spectacular as you had dreamed it for perhaps 16, 18, 20, 25 years of your life.

Things obviously get tough when suddenly your wedding becomes all about everyone else rather than about you. It's a classic case that every bride goes through, but remember it's all about enjoying the imperfect wedding rather than stressing for the perfect wedding. Because in doing so, you'll realize you may spend your entire time perfecting a wedding, which you will learn to hate afterward because you don't remember a single moment that you were happy during it.

Culture vs Religion - Sometimes we prefer wearing hijab and our families prefer us not wearing hijab on our big day, and sometimes it's the opposite, whichever way it may be make sure you are satisfied with it. Because, there is a long life ahead of you where you may cringe at even looking at the pictures taken of you as a bride. If you have decided to wear hijab then that's a great job and even more than that, it's a greater task that needs a lot of skill to perfect and fulfill. Wearing hijab somehow seems to be so odd on the day of your wedding, most of the brides you've probably seen have done it wrong or just look awkward and you don't want to be that way, I know, I get it. So what can you do?

Disclaimer : learn from my mistakes. I was hitting an imaan low when i got married and chose not to wear my duppatta as a hijab and regret it till date. I want everyone, all sisters who are debating if they want to wear their wedding duppatta as a hijab to realize that this decision will follow you for a very long time. So please take out your time to consider it! I really regretted not giving my hijab that much importance and giving into being more cultural. If hijab means a lot to you then you want to stick to it, because believe it or not the 5000 tagged fb pictures, the wedding album, the online professional picture gallery, the wedding video will all remind you of how horrible your decision was. I'm not telling you what to do by any means, I'm just saying from my experience please make sure you think through your decision, insha'Allah! May Allah swt guide you and make you feel beautiful and elegant in hijab, ameen.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I will say that most of the brides we have checked make hijab on their wedding day look kind of hideous. (Sorry to say that) I feel like people can really make hijab look beautiful and so different on their wedding day but just haven't really learned how to. I guess it stems off from the fact that not everyone gets married at the same time, which means not everyone goes through that dilemma, and when they do, well by then all the others who were going through this problem are out of it and could care less about it. So, let's try cutting this cyclic problem, which grows perpetually.

Some thoughts in bullet style:

- If you are getting your wedding outfit custom made, then ask for a chinese collar since it covers your neck and looks elegant like the picture below. Make sure if it's custom made to start looking and explaining what you want it to look like to the tailor 6-8 months in advance or even a year. Also, make sure you keep a few inches looser for your outfit because you want to be able to tighten it later just in case, instead of it being too tight and not being able to fit into it. Also, dont worry if you are freaking about losing weight, somehow every bride loses weight right before their wedding. I lost 25 lbs in 1.5 months and I worked out like non-stop! :)

chinese collar

- Another option you have is to wear a hyderbadi styled outfit which also does a pretty good job in covering your neck. Hyderabadi wedding outfit is apparently nothing like a Pakistani wedding outfit, the pants are like a churidaar pajama (which is what the model is wearing in the picture above) and it is complimented with a kameez with a duppatta that is a few feet long. The duppatta loops around your entire body and then at the very end of the fabric it comes over your head. Anyhow, it does a really good job at concealing your neck, and whichever parts of your neck remain visible can be concealed by a classic hyderbadi choker necklace, which is like huge. You can see both the outfit, long duppatta and the hyderabadi choker in the pictures below. You can also see how strategically my friend has placed everything to make sure her request to be covered isn't gone unheard, masha'Allah! :) (Note: She also wore two duppattas for her walk in, doing the whole traditional thing, wish i had done the same thing! It's so hard to look down while walking in, it's just awkward haha, but this extra duppatta makes it simpler and more cultural.)

- This is the one day I would recommend you wear a very high bun (kind of a like a camel hump) because the work on your duppatta is heavy and will need someplace to rest on. Also, the higher the bun in the back the more naturally the duppatta falls on the front of your head, making it easier to conceal your hair and make it also look very cultural.

-Some of the jewelry pieces people should consider wearing is the tikka, nose ring, long pearl stranded necklaces. I would even go as far as saying that you should try wearing earrings and a jhoomar. You can of course pin the jhoomar, tikka and earrings into your hijab cap, which means you are still doing the fard and covering your hair completely. Also, if you can notice in some of the pictures that I have included, I wrote in the caption about how they are wearing this jewelry head piece, which I dont know the name for but it also does a great job at giving you more jewelry options, and can help in concealing your hairline while pulling your duppatta to the very front, making it look super natural. I used to hate this kind of jewelry but im growing a liking to it these days since it's so in!

look at her nose ring!

she also has a nose ring but also that jewelry head piece will give an opportunity to wear a hijab cap and bring the duppatta foward

Notice her jewelry on her forehead, i think this is super hijabi-friendly!

Another jewelry head piece, if she had just moved her duppatta a little more forward, she would be a hijabi!

This of course is an drama actress who also is rocking it the hijabi way.

-Wear a matching undercap under your duppatta. Or, experiment with wearing black to give the illusion of normal hair or wear a nude color cap which just looks like part of your skin around your hairline area. Also, please do not push back your duppatta to the middle of your skull while having your cap being the main thing everyone gets to see with all the jewelry. Although you get to show your jewelry it comes with a price, it just doesn't look as appealing to have your duppatta set at mid-skull area. It looks super raw, avoid it, pleaseeeee! :)


I would recommend not doing this You should do something like the pictures below.

-Make sure you pin your entire duppatta in as many places as possible because that will gurantee that everything stays in tact, even if it's 50000394488484 pins, just do it!

-Make sure you try on heavy detailed bordered duppattas and light detailed ones too, see which one works for your face type. For me, the heavy border really made it hard for me to keep my duppatta at my hairline, it kept sliding back. But for some people it works wonders because it stays in one place due to the weight and makes it look natural while hiding all your hair.

- Get your sleeves tailored to 3/4 length because the chooriyan (bangles) need space and will cover your arms. Also, you can buy cheap nude colored sleeves from LaDecence Hijabs if you wish to cover your arms, and this way no one will be able to tell.

-Some people have even gone out of their way to buy custom made duppattas that were sewn in such a way that it made a crease where the sister would place it on her forehead, kind of like Youtuber Amenakins Hoojabs. The wedding duppatta looks almost like it was made in hoodie style but doesn't look so apparent. (I personally wouldn't do it but it's your call.)

-These days the trend is to drape your duppatta over your head and on one side let it hang in front of you and the other side let it just be tucked neatly behind your shoulder. Now, if you have a hijab cap and want to show your earrings, I don't see how that would be a problem. You could show one of your earrings and perhaps even your jhoomar this way. Look at the pictures below you could do it exactly like that. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THESE STYLES!