Two days before my wedding, my future mother-in-law, Linda, decided to play a “little prank” on me. She had always hated my hair style, my wedding plans, my taste—basically everything about me.
So she snuck into our apartment and swapped my ash blonde hair dye for a neon green bottle. She thought she was finally sabotaging me. But she didn’t count on one thing: my fiancé Ryan’s loyalty… and his wicked sense of revenge.
I had always known planning a wedding would be stressful. But I never imagined ending up with hair that looked like a radioactive parrot, just two days before walking down the aisle.
It all started during what I called “Wedding Week,” when Linda began dropping by unannounced nearly every day, insisting she was there to “help” with last-minute details.
She’d been picking at every single choice since Ryan proposed.
“The venue… Oh, a backyard wedding? How… quaint,” she’d sniffed.
“The buffet? Well, I suppose some people prefer casual,” she said when we mentioned our catering plan.
“And wildflowers? How… rustic,” she added, wrinkling her nose like we’d just declared war on good taste.
Her passive-aggressive comments drove us both crazy. But confronting her? Impossible. She had perfected the art of making insults sound like compliments.
I had spent months planning an intimate ceremony that truly felt like “us.” String lights twinkling in my parents’ oak trees, mason jars brimming with freshly picked wildflowers, a dress that made me feel like a woodland fairy—not a formal, stiff bride. Everything reflected who Ryan and I were, not what his mother wanted us to be.
Two days before the wedding, Linda plopped herself onto our secondhand couch like it might bite her, her sour expression scanning our living room with surgical precision.
“Are you sure you want to wear your hair like that for the wedding, dear?” she asked, arching her perfectly plucked eyebrows at my ash blonde waves.
“Your natural blonde is quite pretty. And with your complexion…” She let the sentence hang like a guillotine blade.
I forced a smile, gripping my coffee cup until my knuckles went white. “Yes, Linda. I’m sure. It’s close to my natural color anyway. I’m just touching it up tomorrow at the salon, like I told you last week.”
“Hmm,” she said delicately, sipping her tea. “Well, it’s your day, I suppose. Though I do wish you’d consider that lovely upscale salon I recommended. A salon that lets you bring your own dye seems a bit… well, I understand budget constraints can be… limiting.”
I clenched my jaw so tight I swear I could hear my teeth grinding. Ryan’s voice echoed in my head: “Just let it roll off, babe. She’s trying to get a reaction.” Easy for him to say—he’d spent thirty years building immunity to her venom.
“Oh, would you mind if I used your powder room?” she asked, setting down her barely touched tea.
I gestured toward the hallway, grateful for the brief escape. “Of course. You know where it is.”
She spent far longer in there than necessary—my first hint that something was up. When she emerged, her lipstick was freshly applied, and her smile had that cat-that-ate-the-canary look I’d come to dread.
“Well, I should be going. So much to do before the big day!” she said, air-kissing my cheeks. “Do try to get some rest, dear. Those dark circles under your eyes…”
The next day at my usual salon, everything started normally. Megan, my stylist, chatted about her latest drama obsession while mixing the dye I had brought from home.
“So, final touch-up before the big day, huh?” she said, grinning at me in the mirror. “Nervous?”
“About marrying Ryan? No way. About surviving his mother for the next forty years? Absolutely terrified,” I joked.
“Still giving you grief about the wedding?” Megan asked, sectioning my hair.
“If passive-aggressive comments were an Olympic sport, she’d take gold,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Yesterday she spent twenty minutes explaining why backyard weddings are ‘charming in their simplicity.’ Pretty sure that wasn’t a compliment.”
Megan laughed and began applying the dye—but slowly, hesitantly. She frowned at the mixture, her movements faltering.
“Um, Sarah… are you sure you want to do this color?”
“What do you mean?” My stomach sank. “It’s the same ash blonde I always use.”
“Well… no.” She held a hand mirror behind my head.
I screamed. Loud. Horrified. Electric green was bleeding into my hair, bright enough to be visible from space. My “ash blonde” looked like radioactive AstroTurf.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
Megan frantically tried rinsing it, but it was hopeless.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered. “This is definitely the dye you always use… maybe a manufacturing error?”
Then it hit me: Linda’s long bathroom visit yesterday. She had done this.
I drove home in a daze, sunglasses on even though it was cloudy, praying it was just the lighting. But the bathroom mirror confirmed it: I looked like a highlighter had vomited on me.
Ryan found me curled on the bathroom floor, mascara streaked down my cheeks, surrounded by hair products like some desperate scientist searching for a cure.
“Sarah? Babe, what’s wrong? I got your texts and… oh my God!” His jaw dropped.
“Your mother,” I choked out. “She must have switched my dye. She’s the only one who’s been here. She finally… she finally found a way to ruin everything.”
Ryan’s expression hardened. He knelt beside me, pulling me into his arms.
“Hey, look at me. Nothing is ruined. You could walk down the aisle with purple polka-dotted hair and it wouldn’t matter. You’re still my wife, and I love you no matter what you look like.”
Then his voice took a sharper edge. “But don’t worry. Leave it to me. Mom’s going to regret this.”
The next morning, Ryan called Linda over. Sweet as honey on the phone, until she arrived in her signature Chanel suit and gasped at my hair.
“Oh, honey! What happened to your hair?” she said, clutching her chest.
“Cut the act, Mom,” Ryan said, icy. “We know you switched Sarah’s hair dye.”
Linda’s face flickered through shock, indignation, innocence, then settled on wounded dignity.
“I would never! How dare you accuse me?”
“Really?” Ryan crossed his arms. “You’re the only one who’s been here. The only one who would do this. Remember when you put orange dye in Aunt Fran’s shampoo?”
Her face crumpled.
“It was just a little joke,” she muttered. “I thought it might make her reconsider that awful blonde. Really, dear,” she turned to me, “you have to admit it wasn’t doing you any favors.”
Ryan’s voice was deadly calm. “Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re paying for every treatment to fix this, or you’re uninvited from the wedding. And if you ever do anything like this again, you’re out of our lives. Period.”
Linda blanched. “But I’m your mother!”
“And Sarah is going to be my wife. Choose: being right, or being part of our lives.”
After three expensive, unsuccessful attempts to strip the green, I sat in the bathroom, fighting back tears. Ryan walked in, hands behind his back, holding a bowl of hair dye.
“If you can’t beat ‘em…” he grinned.
“You wouldn’t,” I said, incredulous.
“I absolutely would.”
The next day, we walked down the aisle—matching green hair, grinning like idiots—while our guests tried desperately not to stare. My dad nearly choked on laughter. Even my sobbing mother admitted we looked “uniquely us.” Linda? She sat in the back row, looking like she’d swallowed a lemon.
Sometimes, the best revenge isn’t getting even. It’s showing the world that nothing—even nuclear-waste-colored hair—can steal your joy.