The Cape Doctor: Veils, Hair and Portraits
Cape Town couples worry about rain. What actually turns up, especially in the summer months, is wind. The south-easter that locals call the Cape Doctor arrives in gusts that can lift a marquee wall, spin a table setting off a cloth and put an entire hairstyle across somebody's face at the exact moment the vows begin. It is worth planning for properly, partly to protect the day and partly because wind, handled well, produces some of the best photographs a wedding will ever have.
What the wind actually does
The practical effects are not subtle. Loose paper leaves the table. Candles will not stay lit. Light fabric on an arch snaps rather than drapes. Anyone speaking outdoors is much harder to hear, and anyone standing in it for an hour becomes cold even on a warm day.
Photographically, the consequences are more interesting. Hair moves constantly, so frames are made in short windows between gusts. Fabric takes on a shape it never has indoors. And the light itself is often superb on a windy Cape afternoon, because the same conditions that push the wind across the peninsula frequently keep the sky clean and the air sharp.
Veils: the best problem you can have
A veil in wind is either the single most photogenic thing at a wedding or a small ongoing crisis, and which one you get depends mostly on preparation. A long veil catching a gust and arcing out sideways is a frame couples enlarge and hang on a wall. The same veil wrapping around a face during the ring exchange is the frame nobody wants.
- Pin it properly and pin it deep. A comb set into a secure section of hair will survive far more than one clipped near the surface.
- Give someone the job. One person in the wedding party whose task is to unwrap and reset the veil, without being asked.
- Decide when it comes off. Many couples wear the veil for the ceremony and remove it for the portraits, which gives you both sets of photographs and removes the fight.
- Use the wind deliberately. For portraits, we tend to position a couple so that the veil blows away from faces rather than across them, which usually means turning into the wind rather than away from it.
Hair, and a decision made early
The single most useful conversation to have with whoever is doing your hair is about wind, and it should happen at the trial rather than on the morning. There are broadly two approaches that work outdoors, and one that does not.
What works is either genuinely secured hair, pinned and set so that it holds its shape all afternoon, or hair that is deliberately loose and meant to move. Both photograph beautifully. What does not work is a smooth, sculptural style that is only held by product, because the first serious gust will half-undo it, and half-undone reads as untidy rather than intentional.
The same goes for anyone else in the wedding party who is standing outdoors for a long ceremony. It is worth mentioning wind in the group chat, so that people arrive prepared rather than surprised.
Finding the lee
Most of the work on a windy day is about geography. Wind moves around obstacles and leaves calm pockets behind them, and finding those pockets is a large part of how portraits get made on a blustery afternoon.
We look for the sheltered side of a building, a wall, a dense hedge, a stand of trees, or a dip in the ground. On a coastal site, dune faces and rock outcrops do the same job. Sometimes the answer is simply to walk twenty metres further, because wind can drop off sharply over a short distance when there is something solid in the way.
It is worth doing this reconnaissance before the day rather than in wedding clothes. If you are visiting your venue for a planning meeting, ask which direction the prevailing wind comes from and where the staff go to stand when it is blowing.
Ceremony and reception details
Wind is unkind to the styled parts of a wedding, and a little pre-emption saves a great deal of frustration.
- Weight everything. Menus, orders of service, place cards and signage all need something holding them down.
- Choose heavier stationery. Thick card stays put where light paper does not.
- Hurricane vases for candles, or accept that outdoor candles will not stay alight.
- Think about sound. If your day is being filmed, wind across a microphone is the one problem that cannot be fixed afterwards. A sheltered ceremony position matters as much for the film as for the photographs.
- Low arrangements survive better than tall ones, which act as sails.
Photographing the wind rather than around it
There is a version of a windy wedding where everybody spends the afternoon fighting it, holding hair down, apologising, and waiting for it to stop. There is another version where the wind simply becomes part of what the day looked like, and that version photographs far better.
Movement is difficult to create in a still photograph and wind hands it to you at no cost. A dress pulling in one direction, a veil suspended in the air, a jacket held closed, two people laughing because they can barely stay upright. Those frames have energy that a calm day does not produce, and they are unmistakably of a particular place. Nobody looks at them and thinks the wedding could have been anywhere.
The one thing worth protecting
If you take a single practical step, make it this: put the ceremony somewhere sheltered, even if the view is marginally less spectacular. That is the part of the day with the most standing still, the most speaking, and the most emotional weight. Guests need to hear it, and the two of you need to be able to concentrate on each other rather than on staying upright.
Everything after the ceremony can happen in the wind quite happily. Portraits, in particular, often improve in it. Plan the still parts of the day for shelter, let the moving parts go where the wind is, and you will end up with a gallery that looks like a Cape summer afternoon actually feels.
