Old, New, Borrowed and Blue - TV Tropes - EU-Vietnam Business Network (EVBN)

Monica: Okay, come on, I can’t get married until I get something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
Chandler: Okay, all right, all right, all right! Okay! [takes a blue sweater in the gift shop] Okay, here’s something… here’s something blue and new.
Monica: You’re so efficient. I love you!
Friends , “The One in Vegas”

Okay, come on, I can’t get married until I get something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.Okay, all right, all right, all right! Okay! [takes a blue sweater in the gift shop] Okay, here’s something… here’s something blue and new.You’re so efficient. I love you!

An old English tradition describing the four things a bride must carry at her wedding:

Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue.

The final line “…And a silver sixpence in her shoe” is all but forgotten nowadays, at least in part because sixpence pieces aren’t used anymore in Britain and never were in the USA. Some people buy antique coins especially for the purpose (and for considerably more than 6p); whether that also counts towards their Something Old is up for debate.

For Shotgun Weddings, the Something New is the baby (often directly invoked as such).

The Something Blue is usually a ribbon or brooch, or some other minor accessory. Before 1840, blue was the choice colour for wedding dresses as it was the colour for purity (being associated with the Virgin Mary; see True Blue Femininity). The white gown only became popular that year, when Queen Victoria wore a white lace gown for her wedding to Prince Albert and has remained a traditional western wedding costume ever since.

Wedding episodes are frequently named after this, occasionally split into Cross-Referenced Titles for a multi-parter.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

A rare non-wedding example in Bartender in chapters 136 to 143 features “Treasures of the Bar” which uses the same wedding criteria for the purpose of collecting specific mementos as good luck charms for reopening a new bar. This is somewhat a prank by another veteran bartender to the apprentice Tsubasa, because Ryu and Tsubasa opening a new bar together is kinda parallel to starting a new married life together. Even their nameplate has “R&T” in it.
Manga series The Embalmer refers to this tradition in its opening episode. The embalmer’s client’s fiancé is killed in a car accident shortly before the wedding – the embalmer conceals the stitching of the woman’s reattached leg with a blue garter (an item also borrowed from a friend) so that when the body is displayed during her funeral it completes a symbolic wedding to offer the client some solace.
The Plot Coupons in Wedding Peach, called the “Saints Something Four”. Each of the four girls gets one and they become a Holy Hand Grenade in the second Season.

Comedy

Veteran comic Bob Monkhouse was once dismissed as a comedian in possession of a stage routine that was “mainly old, seldom new, often borrowed and sometimes blue”.

Comic Books

An Ivy the Terrible strip where Ivy tries to get the four things for a friend’s wedding. First she goes into a fish and chip shop to ask for something really ancient and gets chased out. She later gets a vase from an antique shop for something old, and borrows a baby blue whale as something new, borrowed, and blue.
Astonishing X-Men: When Northstar and Kyle get married, Northstar’s sister Aurora gifts him with his old Alpha Flight pin (something old), season passes to the Habs (something new), and a Northstar bobblehead (something borrowed). Since Beast is officiating, she counts him as the something blue.
Mr. and Mrs. X: Rogue’s friends scramble to make sure she has all four in time for her impromptu wedding to Gambit. Old is a pair of earrings Psylocke gifts her, New is a bunch of flowers Jean Grey cuts from the garden, Borrowed is the veil Kitty Pryde wore before bailing on her own wedding. Blue ends up being Rogue’s adoptive mother Mystique, although her brother Nightcrawler points out that he’s also blue and was right there.

Fan Works

Films Live-Action

In Disney’s Babes in Toyland, Mother Goose is helping Mary Mary Quite Contrary make her wedding dress and recites the “Something old, something new, something borrowed…” Upon which the film’s Big Bad shows up, causing Mother’s pet goose Sylvester to crack, “Something old and ugly, too!”
A plot point in the 1956 psychological thriller A Kiss Before Dying.
The sister of a murder victim is able to deduce that her pregnant but unmarried sister’s “suicide” had been staged and that she had actually been murdered, when she realizes an odd collection of clothing items her slain sister was wearing included “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”. The sister hadn’t gone to kill herself; she had (she thought) gone to marry the father of her unborn child. Instead, the sister’s murderous boyfriend lured her to a deserted building on the pretense that they would get married, then pushed her off the roof, having already taken steps to make her death look like a suicide.
In the film In Her Shoes, Rose’s grandmother lends her – big surprise – a pair of shoes: old, but not to Rose (new), not given to her (borrowed), with little blue decorations on the inside.
Something Borrowed: The “something borrowed” is actually the protagonist’s best friend’s fiancé. Rachel has been friends with Darcy their entire life, despite their vast personality differences. At Rachel’s thirtieth birthday party, she ends up spending the night with Darcy’s fiancé and realises she’s been in love with him for years.

Literature

Babysitters Club:
- In the book Kristy’s Big Day, Kristy’s mom gets married, and her underwear is her “something blue.” Too Much Information.
- Dawn’s mother marries Mary Anne’s father and wears blue underwear as her something blue.
In the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, the Doctor has to get married because it’ll somehow save the world from extra-dimensional baboons. Fitz mentions it’s too bad they can’t bring the TARDIS into the chapel, because it would count as all four.
Fred, The Vampire Accountant: In the sixth book, Undeading Bells, the overarching plot is Fred and Krystal planning their wedding together. Accordingly, the first four section titles are “Someplace Old”, “Someone New”, “A Partner Borrowed”, and “A Place of Blue”.
note

The fifth one makes up an original end to the rhyme with “Trust, Friendship, and Love That’s True”.
Little House on the Prairie, These Happy Golden Years: Laura’s mother objects to her getting married in the new black dress they are making for her. “Marry in black, you’ll wish yourself back!” Laura cheerfully suggests that she can wear it with a blue-lined bonnet that she’s owned for several years and her mother’s gold brooch, to which Ma Ingalls concedes that there’s probably no truth in these old sayings anyway.
Emily Giffin’s best-selling chick-lit books use the wedding theme in the title: Something Borrowed and its continuation Something Blue.
Twilight: In Breaking Dawn, Bella gets roped into a fancy traditional wedding as a favor to Alice. “Something old” and “Something blue” are the sapphires that Charlie and Renee have put into a set of her grandmother’s hair combs, “Something new” is her dress, and “Something borrowed” is Alice’s garter.

Live-Action TV

Puppet Shows

In the episode of The Muppet Show guest-starring Marisa Berenson, Miss Piggy attempts to trick Kermit into marrying her in a wedding ‘sketch’ that was actually legit. She insists that the wedding be traditional: “Something old, something new, something borrowed… and something green.”
During Huxley’s Villain Song in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, the villain begins to list off some of the things he hoards in his hideout.
Huxley: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, things that once belonged to you, like this plastic telephone? I love this traffic cone, this wedding cake for Jill and Jake, this rake, this giant rubber snake, this Chippendale, don’t let it breaaaak! [Crack!]
Bug: Whoops! It’s true! Love is a many-splintered thing!

Video Games

Referenced in Animal Crossing, of all things; occasionally the “Perky” animals will ask girl players if they’ve chosen theirs yet.
Monkey Island:
- In Escape from Monkey Island, the four heirlooms
  which are the key to finding the Ultimate Insult
  
  are something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue respectively. (They were intended as wedding gifts.)
- Following a similar scheme in rhyme and purpose (in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge), in order to make a voodoo doll, you need Something of the Head (dandruff, hair, lice, what have you), Something of the Thread (a thread or cloth sample from the victim’s clothing), Something of the Body (spit, phlegm, blood…whatever), and Something of the Dead (a bone or something from a dead relative).
While not quite a wedding ceremony, a magical ritual in City of Heroes calls for the participation of a old mage, a young witch, a powerful psychic in a borrowed body, and somebody whose name is Cerulean.
Occurs in World of Warcraft in the Twilight Highlands zone, where Alliance players must help along a dwarven marriage for political reasons. Of course, being dwarves, the gifts are slightly different, being “something bold, something brewed, something stolen, something stewed”.
In the Borderlands 2 DLC Mad Moxxi and the Wedding Day Massacre, Moxxi and the Vault Hunters make a love potion using the recipe “Something new, something old, something borrowed, something gold.” They end up using the tears of a baby they kidnapped (something new and borrowed), an aged whiskey (something old), and parts from a golden robot (something gold). At one point, Ellie questions whether the recipe is actually meant to include something blue, referencing the real-world saying, but Moxxi shoots her down, arguing that blue doesn’t rhyme with gold; ultimately, it’s left ambiguous which of them is correct, since while the potion does rekindle the romance between the bride and groom, it also causes the wedding to go spectacularly off the rails.
Referenced in Mystery Case Files: Escape from Ravenhearst: in order to enter the replica of the gazebo in which Charles Dalimar asked Emma Ravenhearst to marry him, the Master Detective has to find the cranks of four music boxes, each one referencing one of the somethings.
The Passing campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 parodies this with the Bride Witch by having Rochelle comment “Something new, something old, something borrowed, something about to rip your guts out.”
In Time and Eternity, the Something Four are based on this and considered legendary treasures guaranteed to bring happiness to those who are worthy of them and the main couple seeks them out in order to use their power to escape a time loop.

Web Comics

PvP had Skull the Troll as the blue thing.
Something*Positive had main character Davan give his best friend Aubrey a bruise (blue) when she was freaking out about not having something for it.

Western Animation

A Peanuts cartoon had Snoopy almost getting married to Fifi the poodle. The girls go through the whole process of old, new, borrowed, and blue while helping Fifi dress for the wedding. (They were all bones.)
The Simpsons:
- In the flashforward episode where Lisa marries Hugh
  (almost)
  
  , Lisa’s pearls are old, her dress is new, she borrows a locket from Hugh’s mother, but she can’t find something blue. Marge gets a pair of scissors, clips a lock of her hair, and gives it to Lisa.
- There’s also an episode where Bart has to marry Cletus’s daughter, who brings the four things to her wedding, although instead of something blue, she has ‘something stew.’
In the DuckTales (1987) episode “Til Nephews Do Us Part”, Scrooge is about to marry a bitchy Gold Digger (and is unaware of her bitchiness; his nephews are of course trying to convince him to no avail), and just before she walks down the aisle, she says, “Something old: my money. Something new: his money. Something borrowed: more money. And something green… ALL the money!”
In the Thomas & Friends episode, “Happy Ever After”, Percy is asked to help find the “Good Luck Package” at the last minute for the wedding of Mrs. Kindly’s daughter. Old Slow Coach was Something Old, a set of buffers right from the factory was Something New, the flat truck the new buffers were on was Something Borrowed, and Thomas of course made an appearance as Something Blue.
In Ben 10: Omniverse episode “Rules of Engagement”, we learn that Tetramand brides have to collect four items to present to the groom’s parents: something conquered, something bruised, something severed, and something blue. Princess Looma Red Wind, with whom Ben got into an Accidental Marriage in a previous episode, returns and collects Ester (proving she conquered the Kraaho), Julie (who was bruised during the fighting), Fistina’s forearm (a robotic arm), and Rook (who has blue on both his armor and fur).

Something new
Something broken
Something black-and-blue”

“Something oldSomething newSomething broken