“Something Borrowed” begins with the telling of how Lily and Marshall want a small, outdoor wedding with an acoustic guitar and how it slowly changed into a large, indoor wedding with hundreds of people. The big day has finally arrived for Lilypad and Marshmellow but disaster is just around every corner. Things start off light with a joke from Robin about having hairy nipples to keep Lily from ruining her makeup but things quickly turn dark as Lily finds out the harp player could go into labor at any minute and her high school boyfriend, Scooter, is prepared to announce his undying love. Meanwhile, Barney learns he can get anything he wants, simply by saying “it’s for the bride”. Barney initially uses his power to help get Lily a glass of wine but quickly uses it get a girl’s phone number and a neck massage. Things turn from bad to worse as Lily finds out the harpist’s water broke, the flower delivery is late, the veil was ran over and Bad tackled the photographer instead of Scooter. Despite all this, Lily kept her cool, that is until Robin discovers she has lost Lily’s wedding underwear. Lily finally snaps and lets out her frustration but Robin saves the day by luring Lily outside for a smoke.
Meanwhile, Marshall isn’t having good luck either. Lily’s cousin was supposed to trim Marshall’s hair, instead she frosted the tips, making Marshall look like a Backstreet Boy as Barney said. Barney leaves to use his new “superpower” to solve the hair crisis. In a sheer panic, Marshall shaves the middle of his head, leaving an even more embarrassing hair style. Ted and Barney find a toupee to cover Marshall’s skunk stripe but the hair piece still looks awful. Marshall and the guys head outside for some air where they run into Robin and Lily. Marshall shows Lily his hair and apologizes for ruining the wedding but Lily explains the wedding was already ruined thanks to her bad luck. Lily asks what happened to the small outdoor wedding they wanted, this inspires Ted to suggest getting married right then for real and inside for the families, that way the real wedding won’t be ruined.
As mentioned earlier in the episode, Barney is licensed to conduct marriages, leaving Ted and Robin as the witnesses. Lily covers Marshall’s head with a hat borrowed from a gardner nearby and Barney begins the ceremony. It becomes clear that despite his liberal stance of marriage, Barney is a big softie for Marshall and Lily. Just as Lily and Marshall say why they love each other, the gardner begins playing an acoustic guitar, completing the last piece of Marshall and Lily’s original wedding plan. Barney’s emotions can’t be held back and he rushes the couple to the end and pronounce them man and wife. Future Ted tells his kids that Lily and Marshall did return inside and had a beautiful wedding but when the gang looks back, they always think of the small outdoor wedding with friends and an acoustic guitar.
“Something Borrowed” was a beautiful story of how Lily and Marshall had the perfect wedding despite having a disastrous wedding. I had been wondering how long it would take to get around the Lily and Marshall’s wedding and the writers did not disappoint, every scene was wonderful and the right amount of humor. I was amazed at Barney’s true feelings about the wedding since he was using his “superpower” for personal gain.
My favorite scene was when Marshall shaved his head, that horrible hair style combined with the crazed look on his face when he turns around was priceless and I have to give Jason Segal props for actually shaving his head.
Cheers.