Woman With Veil Emoji
U+1F470 U+200D U+2640 U+FE0F:bride_with_veil:Skin tonesAbout Woman With Veil 👰♀️
Woman With Veil () is part of the People & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E13.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On Discord it's . Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode. Pick a skin tone above to customize it.
Often associated with bride, veil, wedding, and 1 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A woman wearing a white dress and bridal veil. The bride emoji. It's one of the most emotionally loaded emojis in Unicode: for some people, it represents the best day of their life. For others, impending anxiety.
The base emoji 👰 was added in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name "Bride with Veil." For ten years, it depicted exclusively a woman. Then in 2020, Unicode 13.0 renamed it to "Person with Veil," made the base gender-neutral, and added explicit variants: 👰♀️ (Woman with Veil) and 👰♂️ (Man with Veil). The man with veil emoji became a symbol of LGBTQ+ representation and same-sex marriage, while the woman version continued representing the traditional bride.
The white dress and veil the emoji depicts is a relatively modern tradition. Before Queen Victoria wore a white gown to her 1840 wedding, royal brides wore heavy brocade in silver, red, or blue. Victoria's choice was so shocking (white was the color of mourning at the time) that print media coverage spread the trend across the Atlantic. The white-dress-as-tradition narrative was largely invented after the fact: Godey's Lady's Book incorrectly claimed white wedding gowns were an ancient custom reflecting virginity less than a decade later. The emoji encodes a 180-year-old marketing campaign as if it were timeless tradition.
Peak usage moments: engagement announcements, wedding planning conversations, bridal showers, and the wedding day itself. On Instagram, it pairs with 💍, 💐, and 🥂 in engagement posts. On TikTok, it's central to #BrideTok content.
Beyond literal weddings, it's used for relationship escalation humor ("he remembered my coffee order, time to 👰♀️") and aspirational posts about finding love. It also appears in discussions about wedding culture, bridal fashion, and the wedding industry.
It represents a woman wearing a bridal veil and white dress. Used for weddings, engagements, bridal celebrations, and relationship humor about marriage. The explicit female variant was added in 2020 when the base emoji became gender-neutral.
What it means from...
If your crush sends 👰♀️, context is everything. After an engagement? Celebration. In a joking "he held the door open for me, time to 👰♀️" context? Humor about how fast people jump to marriage fantasies. If she's hinting about marriage while you've been dating two weeks, that's a different conversation.
Between partners, 👰♀️ is serious territory. Before engagement, it can be aspirational or pressuring depending on the relationship stage. After engagement, it's pure excitement and wedding planning energy. During wedding planning, it becomes a daily-use emoji.
Friends use it to celebrate engagements, during bridal shower planning, and in the months of wedding prep. Also used in the exaggerated "he's perfect, time to 👰♀️" format when a friend describes someone meeting the bare minimum of decency.
From family, it usually accompanies wedding excitement or not-so-subtle hints about when someone is getting married. "So when are you 👰♀️?" from a parent is a well-documented phenomenon.
Used when a colleague announces their engagement or wedding. The Slack congratulations thread. Otherwise rare in professional contexts.
On social media, it's part of engagement announcements, wedding hashtags, and bridal content. Also appears in comments congratulating couples.
Flirty or friendly?
This emoji is romantic by definition. It represents marriage. In early dating contexts, using 👰♀️ is a very strong signal that either screams commitment or is clearly a joke. There's no middle ground. Read the room.
- •👰♀️ after a third date = either a joke or a red flag, depending on delivery
- •👰♀️ during wedding planning with your partner = literal and expected
- •👰♀️ in response to someone being nice = exaggerated humor about low standards
He's either talking about a wedding (his, someone else's, or yours), joking about marriage, or describing a bride. In a dating context, it's either humor or a very strong hint. Read the room.
She's either planning a wedding, excited about an engagement, joking about wanting to marry someone, or part of the #BrideTok community. The meaning ranges from literal wedding planning to exaggerated humor. Context from the conversation tells you which.
Emoji combos
Origin story
The bridal veil emoji carries thousands of years of cultural history in a single character. The tradition of veiling brides traces back to ancient Rome, where brides wore a flame-colored veil called a flammeum to ward off evil spirits. The Romans believed malevolent forces might target a bride on her wedding day, so the veil served as a disguise and protection.
In ancient Jewish and Christian traditions, veils symbolized modesty and reverence. During the Victorian era, the purity association solidified. But the white dress itself? That's Queen Victoria's doing. When she married Prince Albert in 1840 in a white Spitalfields silk gown, she broke from convention (white was associated with mourning, not weddings). Print media spread her fashion choice across the Western world, and within a decade, the myth that white wedding dresses were an "ancient tradition" was already being propagated.
The emoji's 2020 transformation is its own cultural moment. Renaming "Bride with Veil" to "Person with Veil" and adding a man with veil variant recognized that the person wearing white at a wedding isn't always a woman. The 👰♂️ emoji quickly became a symbol for same-sex marriage and gender-nonconforming wedding celebrations.
The base 👰 was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name "Bride with Veil." In Unicode 13.0 (2020), the base was renamed to "Person with Veil" and made gender-neutral, with explicit 👰♀️ (Woman with Veil) and 👰♂️ (Man with Veil) variants added. The woman variant is a ZWJ sequence: + + + .
Design history
Around the world
The emoji depicts a Western bridal aesthetic: white dress, veil, presumably church ceremony. This doesn't represent how most of the world gets married. In India, brides traditionally wear red (symbolizing prosperity and fertility). In China, red is also the traditional wedding color. In many African and Middle Eastern traditions, elaborate colorful fabrics and different headcoverings are central to bridal dress.
The veil itself means different things in different religions. In Christianity, it traditionally symbolized purity and submission. In Judaism, the bedeken ceremony involves the groom veiling the bride before the ceremony, traced to the story of Jacob being tricked into marrying Leah instead of Rachel. In Islam, the concept of veiling has entirely different connotations unrelated to weddings.
The 2020 addition of 👰♂️ (man with veil) was celebrated in countries where same-sex marriage is legal and controversial in countries where it isn't. The emoji became a litmus test for views on LGBTQ+ rights in the most unexpected way.
No. Queen Victoria started the trend in 1840. Before that, brides wore heavy brocade in silver, red, or blue. The white-as-tradition myth was being published within a decade of Victoria's wedding. Roman brides wore flame-colored veils, not white ones.
You can, but the emoji specifically depicts a Western bridal aesthetic (white dress, veil). Indian brides traditionally wear red, Chinese brides also favor red, and many other cultures have entirely different bridal fashion. The emoji doesn't represent global wedding traditions.
Popularity ranking
Often confused with
Person with Veil (👰) is the gender-neutral base character, renamed from 'Bride with Veil' in 2020. On some platforms it still looks female. 👰♀️ is the explicit woman variant. If gender specificity matters, use the ZWJ variant.
Person with Veil (👰) is the gender-neutral base character, renamed from 'Bride with Veil' in 2020. On some platforms it still looks female. 👰♀️ is the explicit woman variant. If gender specificity matters, use the ZWJ variant.
Woman in tuxedo (🤵♀️) represents a woman in formal wedding attire without a veil. Some weddings feature a bride in a tuxedo. They're different looks for different people.
Woman in tuxedo (🤵♀️) represents a woman in formal wedding attire without a veil. Some weddings feature a bride in a tuxedo. They're different looks for different people.
👰 is now officially 'Person with Veil' (gender-neutral since 2020). 👰♀️ is specifically 'Woman with Veil.' On updated devices, the base shows a gender-neutral person. On older devices, they may look the same (both female). Use 👰♀️ when gender matters.
Do's and don'ts
- ✗Send it to someone who's recently gone through a breakup or divorce
- ✗Use it to pressure someone about getting married
- ✗Assume everyone wants or aspires to a wedding (some people are happily unmarried)
- ✗Forget that the white dress/veil is a Western tradition that doesn't represent all weddings
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
Fun facts
- •Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding started the white wedding dress tradition. Before that, white was the color of mourning. Godey's Lady's Book falsely claimed white dresses were an "ancient tradition" less than a decade later.
- •Roman brides wore a flame-colored veil called a flammeum to ward off evil spirits. The bridal veil started as supernatural protection, not fashion.
- •In 2020, Unicode renamed "Bride with Veil" to "Person with Veil" and added 👰♂️ (Man with Veil). The man-with-veil emoji became a symbol for same-sex marriage and gender-nonconforming wedding celebrations.
- •In India, brides traditionally wear red (prosperity). In China, red is also traditional. The white-dress-and-veil emoji represents specifically Western wedding culture, not universal bridal tradition.
Common misinterpretations
- •The white dress/veil represents specifically Western Christian wedding tradition. Using it to represent all weddings globally is culturally narrow. Indian, Chinese, and many other traditions look nothing like the emoji.
- •Some people confuse 👰 (person with veil, now gender-neutral) with 👰♀️ (explicitly female). On older devices, they look identical. On updated devices, the base has been redesigned as gender-neutral.
- •Sending 👰♀️ in early dating contexts reads as either a joke about commitment or genuinely intense. The line between humor and pressure depends entirely on delivery and relationship stage.
In pop culture
- •Queen Victoria's white wedding dress is one of the most influential fashion decisions in history. She broke convention in 1840 and the trend spread worldwide through print media. The emoji perpetuates a tradition she literally invented.
- •The 2020 addition of 👰♂️ (Man with Veil) generated both celebration from LGBTQ+ communities and criticism from conservative groups. An emoji redesign became a proxy battle for views on marriage equality.
- •Instagram's #BrideTok and wedding emoji combinations (💍👰♀️🥂🤍) have become a standardized format for engagement announcements on social media. The bride emoji is the visual anchor of the wedding content ecosystem.
Trivia
For developers
- •ZWJ sequence: + + + . Four code points.
- •Skin tone: + + + + for light skin.
- •The base was renamed from 'Bride with Veil' to 'Person with Veil' in Unicode 13.0 (2020). Check your string tables if you're using the old name.
- •Shortcodes: or depending on platform.
- •The 👰♂️ (Man with Veil) variant exists since Emoji 13.0. Support varies: some older platforms don't render it correctly.
In 2020, Unicode renamed 'Bride with Veil' to 'Person with Veil' and added male (👰♂️) and female (👰♀️) variants. The change recognized that the person wearing a veil at a wedding isn't always a woman, supporting same-sex and gender-nonconforming wedding representation.
The explicit woman-with-veil variant was added in Emoji 13.0 (2020). The original 👰 (then 'Bride with Veil') has been in Unicode since 6.0 (2010).
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What does 👰♀️ represent to you?
Select all that apply
- Person with Veil (Emojipedia)
- Woman with Veil (Emojipedia)
- Queen Victoria Sparked the White Wedding Dress Trend (Smithsonian)
- Why Do Brides Wear Veils? (The Wedding Veil Shop)
- Man with Veil LGBTQ significance (Emojiguide)
- Wedding dress of Queen Victoria (Wikipedia)
- New Emojis 2020 controversy (Answers in Genesis)
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