According to my mother, in modern "Mexican" weddings, there are "padrinos de velación." They stand on either side of the bride and groom and are normally a long-time married couple and the main "padrinos." They are are to set an example for the newly married couple. They're supposed to bare testimony that the couple has not been previously married by the Church, etc., etc., etc...Either the "velación" came from the padrinos "watching over" the new couple, or maybe they were the ones to lift the veil as someone previously explained...

arturoramos wrote:

Efrain, et al:

The velacion refered to in the documents does not really fall within any of the vernacular definitions of velacion in Spanish... perhaps the closest such definition would be number 3. The term comes from the Latin velatio nuptialis, which was a ceremony that until recent times was completely seperate from the actual marriage ceremony. It often took place weeks or months after the casamiento. Old marriage records often have seperate records of a "velacion" months after the "desposamiento"

Probably we shall be right in assuming that the first effort everywhere made by the Church to impart a religious character to the contract of marriage was by requiring or urging the married pair to be present at a special Nuptial Mass. The Mass itself constitutes the highest form of consecration and the available evidence points strongly to the conclusion that in such very different matters as the dedication of a church or the burial of the dead, the Christians of the first few centuries had no special ritual adapted for such occasions but were content to offer the holy Sacrifice with appropriate collects. Looking at our actual Nuptial Mass which has retained the essential features of that found in the Sacramentary ascribed to St. Leo, the earliest collection preserved to us of Roman origin, we find that the prayers themselves constitute a blessing of the married pair while the eucharistic benediction which is headed "Velatio nuptialis" is in effect a consecration of the
brid
e alone
to the estate of marriage, a point of view which vividly recalls the Roman conception of matrimony as the veiling of the woman for the special behoof of her husband. This velatio nuptialis spread in slightly varying forms to every part of Western Christendom which received the Roman Mass Book. Down to the present day the same nuptial benediction, specially devoted to the bride and introduced at an unwonted position (immediately after the Pater Noster of the Mass), remains the highest form of sanction which the Church can give to the union of man and woman. By a law of ancient date which is still in force, this special benediction is withheld in all cases in which the bride has been previously mated. Further, though in the early Middle Ages the Nuptial Mass seems sometimes to have been celebrated on the day after the first cohabitation of the pair (see Friedberg, "Eheschliessung", 82-84 and Sohm, "Recht der Eheschliessung", 159), these solemnities seem always to have been ass
ociated
with the marriage itself as distinct from the espousals.