Something Old, Something New

Sep 29

4 min read

Most wedding traditions get repeated far more often than they get explained. Couples tuck a coin into a shoe, avoid seeing each other before the ceremony, or get carried over a doorstep, often without anyone at the wedding actually knowing why. Some of these have a genuinely documented history. Others are folklore dressed up as fact, repeated so often across wedding blogs that they start to sound settled when they're really not. Here's the honest version of both.

Old/new/borrowed/blue: Documented in print from 1871
White wedding dress: Verified, Queen Victoria, 1840
Not seeing the bride: Folklore, unconfirmed origin
Threshold carrying: Disputed, no confirmed source

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

This one has a real, traceable print history, even if its deeper folk origin predates that. The earliest known written version appears in an 1871 short story that mentioned only "something new, something borrowed, something blue." The full four-part rhyme, with "something old" added, turns up five years later in an 1876 newspaper account of a wedding in Lancashire, England. By 1894 it had been recorded as far away as County Monaghan in Ireland, and it crossed the Atlantic by 1905, showing up in one of Emily Post's early novels. The familiar "sixpence in her shoe" line was tacked on later, a Victorian-era addition rather than part of the original.

Each item carries its own small meaning. Something old represents continuity with the past, something new is optimism for the marriage ahead, something borrowed is meant to carry a little good luck from a couple who's already happily married, and something blue stands for fidelity and purity, a colour long associated with constancy well before it became a wedding-specific symbol. The rhyme's popularity has barely dipped since the Victorian era, and it remains one of the few traditions almost every bride in NZ still recognises, even if far fewer follow all four lines to the letter.

The full four-part rhyme, with "something old" added, turns up in an 1876 newspaper account of a wedding in Lancashire, England.

Why some couples still avoid seeing each other before the ceremony

This one is genuinely harder to pin down. The most commonly repeated explanation ties back to the era of arranged marriages, when families reportedly kept an intended bride and groom apart until a match (and often a dowry) was fully settled, on the theory that either party getting a proper look at the other beforehand might prompt second thoughts. A separate, simpler superstition thread treats seeing the bride early as generic bad luck, with no clear tie to arranged marriage at all.

Neither explanation comes with solid documentation attaching a date, region or verified source, so it's fairest to call this one folklore of plausible but unconfirmed origin rather than settled fact. What's not in dispute is how optional it's become. Plenty of NZ couples now choose a first look instead, meeting privately before the ceremony for a quiet moment and a head start on portraits. If you're weighing that decision for your own day, that's covered in more detail in our first look vs aisle reveal guide.

Why white became the traditional wedding colour

This is one of the better-documented traditions on this list, and it's newer than most people assume. Before the 1840s, brides in the West typically married in their best existing dress, in whatever colour that happened to be. Black and brown were genuinely common, being practical colours that didn't show wear, and wealthier brides often wore rich reds or blues to display status rather than white, which was difficult to keep clean and rarely chosen on purpose.

That changed in February 1840, when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert wearing an all-white gown of cream Spitalfields satin and handmade Honiton lace. It was a deliberate break from royal custom, and the choice spread fast once illustrations of the wedding circulated in newspapers and magazines across Europe. Photography's rise later in the century locked the trend in further, since white simply photographed better than colour in the era's black-and-white images. By the mid-1800s, women's magazines were already treating white as the only acceptable choice, a norm that's held for close to two centuries since.

Worth knowing before you repeat it

Two of the traditions in this article, not seeing the bride beforehand and carrying her over the threshold, are genuinely undocumented past the level of folklore. This piece names both plainly as folklore rather than confirmed history, unlike most wedding content that states one version as settled fact.

Carrying the bride over the threshold

Unlike the white dress, this tradition doesn't have a confirmed origin, despite how confidently it's often explained. The most repeated story links it to ancient Roman custom, with the groom carrying the bride to symbolise a token, ritualised reluctance on her part. A separate, unrelated explanation points to old superstitions about tripping when crossing a threshold, treating the carry as a simple way to avoid bad luck rather than anything to do with reluctance at all.

Neither story is backed by a primary historical source that actually confirms it, and fact-checking research into the custom concludes the same thing: it remains genuinely unclear which explanation, if either, is accurate. It's worth knowing that when you repeat this one, you're repeating folklore, not history, however often it gets stated as fact elsewhere.

Two traditions with their own dedicated stories

Two other well-known wedding customs deserve more space than a quick mention here. The bouquet and garter toss, whether they're still expected at NZ weddings and what couples are doing instead, get the full treatment in The Bouquet Toss and Garter Toss: Are They Still Expected at NZ Weddings?. And handfasting, the ribbon-tying ritual with genuine medieval Scottish and English roots as a legally binding form of marriage in its own right, is covered properly in Unity Ceremony Ideas: Sand, Candles, Trees and More, alongside other symbolic options for couples building their own ceremony.

None of these traditions are compulsory, and most NZ couples now pick and choose rather than doing all of them or none. Knowing where each one actually comes from, verified where it can be, honestly flagged as folklore where it can't, at least means whatever you choose to keep is a choice made with the real story, not just the version that's been repeated the most.