Old, New, Borrowed, Blue

I do not think I'm a very traditional person, so I was surprised when I found myself really wanting "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" to wear for our wedding. I knew these were good luck charms and rooted in a time when weddings marked the transfer of property from one man to another. Though there seems to be some differing opinions on what these trinkets stand for, to my mind "something old" symbolized the old tradition of the marriage ritual; "something new," the newness of this particular marriage; "something borrowed," because it would be borrowed from someone who had been married for a long time, symbolized "the long haul"; and "something blue" for luck.


My aunt brought a four-strand pearl necklace that she inherited from her mother-in-law for me to wear for the wedding. My "bouquet," a ribbon-wrapped heart with purple and white flowers, was new, made that day, in fact. My mom's 49er-season-ticket-holder friend loaned me a pair of dangling pearl earrings. I had purchased some blue underwear for the wedding day, and when the photographer came to the house I realized that she couldn't set a pair of undies in a photograph!


Fortunately I had in my little jewelry carrying case a small pearl and blue bead bracelet that Bink had given me when I gave a reading in her wedding a few months before. I hadn't meant to bring it, but had never taken it out after returning from Washington. It made me even happier that I had this small thing from the recent wedding of a close friend, that fit perfectly into the little rhyme I didn't know I cared about until it was time to care about it.