When Lily and Marshall's special day comes, nothing goes as they'd hoped, and the gang steps in to make things better.
This episode provides examples of:
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Barney discovers he can get anything he wants before the wedding just by using the line "It's for the bride".
- Brick Joke: Robin sneaks Lily outside to have a cigarette to calm down. When she and Marshall have their first kiss, he immediately asks her if she's been smoking.Marshall: Did you smoke?Lily: (Lying) No!Robin: (To Barney) Wow. First lie of the marriage. That was fast.
- Bridezilla: Lily did a remarkably good job at subverting this trope when everything went wrong during her wedding day. However season four flashbacks reveal her to have been quite the bridezilla during the months leading up to the wedding.
- Call-Back: Lily and Marshall sneak off into the bathroom at the reception to have their "first time" as a married couple. Ted is there, just like the first first time.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: After Marshall cuts his hair he, Ted and Barney come up with increasingly terrible ideas of how to "solve" the problem while achieveing nothing. When Lily borrows a gardener's hat for him Marshall turns to the guys and points out how simple that was.Marshall: Hat. We thought of authentic Native American headdress before we thought of hat.
- Deus ex Machina: After the gang realizes that the Wedding was ruined from the start, Ted suggests Lily and Marshall to have their real Wedding like they actually intended, with just the five of them in the outdoors. A gardener happened to have a hat they borrowed to cover Marshall's head and a random guy with an acoustic guitar just happened to be playing.
- Funny Background Event: Barney is determined to make the pregnant harp player his latest conquest. When he hears Lily says she's in labor, a thoughtful look appears on his face that makes it clear it's not a deal breaker.
- Gag Haircut: Lily's cousin gives Marshall some awful frosted tips while styling his hair for the wedding. He panics and ends up shaving straight through the middle of his hair, which obviously looks even worse.
- Hopeless Suitor: Scooter, Lily's high school boyfriend, crashes the wedding in hopes Lily will be the Runaway Bride with him. Too bad for him Lily doesn't agree.
- Mundane Solution/Stating the Simple Solution: The guys come up with a variety of outlandish ways to fix/hide Marshall's terrible haircut. Lily just gives him a hat.Marshall: Hat. We thought of "authentic Native American headdress" before we thought of hat.
- My Own Private "I Do": Lily and Marshall privately get married by Barney before the official ceremony. Being outdoors surrounded only by close friends is much closer to the wedding they originally wanted as opposed to the messy, overblown wedding they ended up with.
- Noodle Incident: Ted says he wouldn’t marry Marshall, not because he doesn’t want to, but because he made it a rule not to marry anyone he’s had a farting contest with. Marshall angrily asks if Ted is implying he can’t marry Lily now.
- Shout-Out: Lily and Marshall's improvised wedding has a lot of things in common with Chandler and Monica's wedding in Friends: They are married by the most promiscuous member of the group (Barney and Joey), with their best friends, who were also a couple before that day, as Best Man and Maid of Honor (Ted and Robin and Ross and Rachel).
- Also, Marshall references the plot of The Shawshank Redemption in the midst of his freak out over his haircut.
- Stepford Smiler: Lily said during the whole day that she wouldn't freak out by every mistake that can happen in her Wedding. She finally loses it near the end.
- Take That!: After Lily's cousin dyes Marshall's hair:Marshall: My hair! Look at my hair! She ruined my hair! I look like one of the Backstreet Boys!Barney: You totally do. And not even the good Backstreet Boys, the older, lame dance move, comeback tour Backstreet Boys.Ted: (indignant) ...the good Backstreet Boys?
- Tempting Fate: Lily was willing to accept that a Wedding can't be always perfect. Right after it, everything that can go wrong happens at the same time (Scooter crashes the wedding, Brad tackled the photographer, Marshall gets the worst haircut, her harpist was in labour, the flowers were not going to arrive until they were in the middle of the ceremony, her "special" panties were missing, etc.).
- Traumatic Haircut: Lily's cousin gives Marshall horrific highlights just before the wedding, he then flips out and shaves a chunk of his head in a panic.
