The story of three friends and their beautiful and possibly magical veil continues in The Wedding Veil trilogy. After the first friend found love, a rare painting reveals there may be more to their veil than meets the eye. Now the second friend has possession of the veil as she heads to Italy, ready for an adventure of her own.
But is she ready for love?
Time to find out in The Wedding Veil Unveiled!
I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you SPOILERS!
Emma Lowell (Autumn Reeser) arrives in Padua to begin a course on American art history at the local university. She stays in a residence run by Francesca (Alessandra Carrillo) and the two bond immediately. Francesca admires the veil Emma has brought with her and asks if Emma is getting married. Emma says she is not and reveals that she’s hoping to find out the history of the veil as she and her friends believe it is originally from Italy. Francesca suggests she ask in Burano, a city known for its lace.
The next day, Emma takes Francesca’s advice and tries to take the ferry to Burano. But she has difficulty getting a ticket and is holding up the line. One man jumps over and helps her, reminding her that Europeans put the date before the month. She feels foolish but thanks him for getting her a ticket and boards the ferry. When she gets to the other side, he seems to be following her but just insists they are going in the same direction. They finally manage to part and Emma figures she will never see him again.
Emma finds a museum about the history of lace but is dismayed to learn it is closed. A woman at a store nearby informs her the woman who usually opens the museum was sick so the museum was staying closed. Emma shows her the veil and asks her if she knows where it may have come from. The woman tells her to try a certain shop and gives her directions to get there.
At the store, Emma shows the woman there the veil. The woman starts talking fast in Italian and calls for another woman. Both admire the veil and seem very excited. Emma is very lost as she wonders what is going on.
Enter the man who helped her earlier - Paolo di Stefano (Paolo Bernardini).
Paolo explains that the store belongs to his family and that they made the veil. The women fawning over it are his mother Elena (Anna-Maria Everett) and grandmother Maria (Dora Romano). It was a special veil that they had thought lost forever. They are happy Emma has returned it and she asks about the history. It was made for a woman who was to marry a nobleman in the city back during the 19th century. Emma figures out that this was likely the woman in the painting and decides to learn more about her.
Emma fills Avery (Lacey Chabert) and Tracy (Alison Sweeney) in about her discovery. She asks if they would be okay with returning the veil to Paolo’s family. Both agree but they still wonder how a veil made for the wife of an Italian nobleman ended up in America. Emma decides to keep digging.
First, though, she has a course to teach. Natalia (Wanja Sellers) gets her set up and Emma starts her class with a PowerPoint…that promptly blows all the power in the University.
Oops.
To make matters worse, Paolo also happens to do some part time work at the university and witnessed her little misadventure. He teases her about it but then offers to help her learn more about the veil, thanking her and her friends for letting his family keep the veil. She decides to see if the university has any information about Amici and they agree to work together.
Meanwhile, Paolo is trying to convince his family to expand their lace business into more fashion areas and to have a presences in America. But it’s hard to get his family’s attention, especially his father Nico (Petar Antonov) and his uncle Vittorio (Saverio Buono), as business is often discussed at family meals. They are also pretty stubborn and prefer not to take risks so Paolo has to find a way to convince them that this is a risk worth taking.
Emma is also struggling with her course. While young Luca (Camillo Pardi) enjoys her course, the other students want to skip to the more well-known and exciting American artists and not sit through the history that leads to them. She feels like she can’t get through to them and worries that her program will fail.
Ultimately, they will help each other. But we’ll get there in good time.
First, there’s art and history to discover and beautiful Italian scenery to explore!
They discover that the veil was made for a woman who was to marry an Italian nobleman and Amici painted her wedding portrait. Emma gets access to some of Amici’s sketches and finds an early one of Portrait of a Bride. She realizes that the bride is smiling in the sketch but not in the final painting. That makes her wonder what happened.
Their quest leads them to a mysterious trunk in Paolo’s family house and a descendant of the bride, Signor DiConcini (Velizar Binev). Each time, they get more clues before putting everything together.
Along the way, Emma is welcomed by his family. She’s even invited to his grandmother’s birthday party in a couple weeks and Paolo’s sister Sophia (Mily Cultrera di Montesano) encourages him to have a relationship with Emma. But Paolo is hesitant and so is Emma. He is a widower who is slowly getting over the loss of his wife while she is still stinging from the end of her long term – and long-distance – relationship(mentioned at the start of The Wedding Veil). It makes her hesitant to start anything serious – especially with someone who lives in another country. Paolo understands.
As for the veil, they discover that it was made for a young woman who was to marry a nobleman. But she fell in love with Amici and they were lovers. She did eventually get married but gave birth to Amici’s child in secret. Her faithful maid adopted the little girl and was also gifted the veil. Ultimately, the child grew up and moved to America, explaining how the veil got to America. What happened to it after that must be answered in America.
It’s a love story with a sad but hopeful ending.
Emma takes some advice from Paolo and decides to give up her linear lesson plans in order to find out what her students were interested in learning. She finally got them to engage with her material and the program continues to do well. Emma grows fond of one student, Luca (Camilo Pardi), who is a promising art student from a family known for their blown glass creations. Luca already has a spot at a major art school but he has to pass her class to take it. But his family’s store is struggling and they are unable to pay for the semester so he has to drop the class. Despite Natalia telling her that she can’t have Luca in her class, Emma lets him sit in on her lectures as they try to figure out a way to pay what he owes.
Avery reveals that her husband Peter has formed a committee under his family’s foundation that awards scholarships to up and coming artists. Emma helps Luca apply for it and Peter grants it – they even offer to pay for his tuition at the fancy art school. Emma apologizes to Natalia for going against her wishes but Natalia forgives her, understanding wanting to advocate for a student.
Yay, Luca!
Also, yay for Emma as Natalia invites her to teach the following year as well.
Using Emma’s advice, Paolo gathers his family at a time and place that does not serve food. He presents a PowerPoint with stats and figures on why they should open a store in New York City. While his grandmother and mother are impressed, his father and uncle need to think it over. Sophia just wants her brother to marry Emma already.
I like Sophia.
But both Paolo and Emma are still determined to just be friends though Paolo is clearly falling for her. Emma starts to be more romantic, even deciding to visit Juliet’s balcony. This is believed to be the balcony where Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers met. People leave letters to Juliet, asking for her help in matters of the heart or to tell her secrets. Emma adds a letter of her own.
Emma then makes Maria an apple pie and bring it to her birthday party, which also takes place during a major festival. She meets most of Paolo’s family and his father tells him his idea to sell handbags has been a great one. Though he hasn’t made a final decision about the store in New York, he promises to trust his son more when it comes to the business.
Yay, Paolo!
He decides to take a chance as he and Emma enjoy the festival. Paolo asks Emma if they could give a relationship a try but she’s still not sure a long-distance one will last. Instead, she would rather stay friends and enjoy the rest of their time together. Though heartbroken, Paolo agrees.
Emma prepares to return to the United States. Francesca is also Team Paolo and tries to encourage Emma to talk with him. But Emma remains resolute that a long distance relationship won’t work. She then receives a gift from Paolo’s family – they give her the veil back and gift it to her and her friends. But it doesn’t seem that the veil will bring Emma love like it did for Avery.
At another meal time meeting, Paolo’s father announces that he has accepted Paolo’s proposal to open a store in New York. Everyone congratulates him and Sophia tells her brother to go get the woman he loves. He does not hesitate.
Emma boards a train, heading to Rome for a few days before returning to the United States. Paolo jumps on the train and tells her that he is going to New York, hoping that a few hundred miles is better than a few thousand miles. He confesses his feelings for her and Emma stops fighting her own, kissing him as she decides to make it work.
We then cut to about six months later as Emma and Paolo get married. She wears the wedding veil as Avery and Tracy stand by her side. Everyone is happy and their families have really blended. Peter was unable to go so Avery is on her own but we are assured that the couple is still very happily in love, promising the same for Emma and Paolo.
The friends retreat to a room and Emma says it is time to pass the veil off. Avery and Tracy help her take it off and they realize it has a tear. Since it’s Tracy’s turn to take the veil, she says she’ll take it back to New York and get it fixed but she doubts she’ll be wearing it soon. She and Finn are happy with their relationship as is. Besides, she still doesn’t believe in the legend despite Avery finding Peter and Emma finding Paolo, who is now opening his store in Chicago rather than New York so he can be with Emma.
And so the veil brings us a second happy ending as Emma and Paolo begin their life together.
I honestly think this is my favorite of the trilogy. Though that may be because this was the first one I watched all the way through (I caught the last hour of The Wedding Veil and then watched the whole thing after the entire trilogy had premiered).
And good news – you can watch any of the three movies on their own and not be lost. It’s easy to catch up and each story is relatively self-contained so you don’t really need to know the other storylines to follow along.
Reeser is probably one of my favorite Hallmark leading ladies and I enjoy the movies she is in. This one is no different. She is good at playing head strong and somewhat stubborn women who have walls up for a reason but once they lower them, they are incredibly loving. Emma fits this mold to a T. It’s understandable why she’s wary of a long-distance relationship and why she is hesitant to let herself love Paolo. But the audience just wants her to be happy in the end because of how Reeser brings her to life.
I commend Hallmark for casting Italian actors for the Italian characters. Bernardini made the perfect leading man and I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a few more movies. He balanced Paolo’s charm and his vulnerability perfectly. I couldn’t help but fall in love with him a little myself and root for him and Emma to get together, especially as Bernardini and Reeser had amazing chemistry together. It was perfect.
Italy served as a beautiful backdrop to this story and was a perfect choice for the movie, especially with all those canals. Absolutely gorgeous!
The stories are sweet, romantic and a bit sad but ultimately happy and hopeful – everything you want from your romance movie. So I do highly recommend this, even if you don’t want to watch the other movies.
Now onto the third and final movie – The Wedding Veil Legacy!
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