All of Her Lies
This is one the best revenge stories I have ever heard, and is even now, years later, it’s constantly discussed when the subject of weddings or awful mothers-in-law comes up. So my friend was together with his girl for a good six years at the time of the story. Let me give you a bit of background. The whole story plays out in Germany, where the mother-in-law’s family comes from. My friend’s wife’s family is of Sinti background. Now, Sinti and Roma do have a bad reputation here in Germany.
They are called gypsies, and supposedly are all scam artists who have no real home and travel around to be always two steps ahead of the law on their heels. You get the picture. But her family is actually really well off. In fact, they are quite a bit richer than the mother-in-law’s family. However, she did not know that, since instead of asking she decided that her prejudices are a way better source of information. They’ve lived in Germany for well over 30 years and own their own company that produces motor parts for several big car and truck companies.
Now, how much the company is worth is really not all that important, but to paint a picture: They employ well over 250 people just in production alone. The mother-in-law’s family, meanwhile, is typical middle class, nothing much to say there. The dad works an office job, and she works delivering drugs for a pharmacy a couple of hours a week. Now, there was so much leading up to the wedding. The first year of the relationship, the mother pretty much ignored he had a girlfriend.
That is, until she sees a photo and realizes the girl is a few shades too brown for her taste. This is pretty much a quote, only she said in a way less friendly way I do not want to repeat here. My friend then explained her being Sinti, and she lost it even more. It boiled down to her being a gold-digger or a scam artist, and she was constantly switching between the two. But my friend has a backbone, and this ended with the mother being in a timeout for six months, which became over a year, since every time she tried to force contact, the time out started again at zero.
Once contact was established again, the mother-in-law had realized open battle was not something she could win, so she decided to switch to guerrilla tactics. The absolute highlight was creating two fake Facebook profiles, one for my friend and one for his ex. She sent back and forth “texts” for months to create a fake affair. Odin be thanked, she made a grave mistake. A month before, my friend was supposed to go on a four-day business trip for his company.
The texts basically claimed his ex had come with him and they had wild times every night. What the mother-in-law did not know was that friend never went there. It fell through a week prior, and he took the days off instead to do a short trip with his girlfriend. So he had the best possible alibi for the time. Otherwise, I don’t know what would have happened on the day she came into the house with printed-out screenshots from that page. At first, his girlfriend was devastated and angry, until they found the messages about the business trip. In that moment, they both turned on the mother-in-law, who of course denied everything.
It landed her with nine months of time out again. The rest of it until the engagement was constant hints at the girl not being trustworthy, bringing up news stories that showed Sinti in a negative light etc., etc. But since they were low contact (meeting twice a year), she did not have many opportunities. Then came the engagement about one year before the wedding. Her family was over the moon of course, while the mother-in-law had a complete meltdown over the phone. The worst sentence was that she would stop this wedding if it is the last thing she would do in her life. The actual wedding planning began, and it was a total circus.
When she was asked for an address list, the mom actually gave them false addresses, in the hopes once the cards would have been returned, it would be too late to send a new batch to the actual addresses. Of course, the cards came back within a week, and this time they were smart enough to ask someone else for the addresses, and simply did not tell her. She also started a rumor campaign that was at least partially successful, so the contact to his side of the family got worse and worse.
She tried to just cancel the flowers, but since the florist knew the bride in person, he called her to confirm. After that, everything was secured with passwords. This way, they found out she also tried to cancel the venue and change the whole menu. Most of the bride’s side of the family is vegetarian, and she tried to change it to an all-meat menu. Finally came the thing that made my friend and his fiancée snap.
He had found out thanks to his brother, who was acting as a mole in his mother’s camp, that all of the women on his side planned to come in black mourning clothes, to make it clear this was not a day of joy for them, but a day of mourning, since her son made the biggest mistake of his life. When they found out, they did…nothing. At first. Since they wanted to embarrass her to the bone, they acted as if they knew nothing, and decided to exact their revenge on the wedding day.
This was a good four months before the wedding, so it gave them ample time to plan. So the day of the wedding comes, and all the guests have entered the church and are sitting down. The guests are informed that the wedding party would be late by about half an hour, but they would show a DVD in the meantime. And that DVD was explosive. They had collected evidence and witness accounts detailing exactly how the sneaky mother-in-law had tried to sabotage the wedding. It started with an account of the food deliverer saying that she had tried several times to change the menu.
This was followed by the florist’s story about how she had tried to cancel all the flowers for the wedding, including a message she left on the answering machine trying to act like she was the bride, but everybody could hear it was her. Up to this point, the mother-in-law had been shocked into silence. But the next part would change that. You see, the groom’s brother had secretly recorded how she trash-talked and lied about the bride to everybody who would listen to her on Skype.
Once she started to hear those words, she suddenly screeched like a banshee and stormed to the front to stop that DVD. But they had anticipated that, and before she could get even close, three gentlemen closed in on her and told her to either sit down or she would be escorted off the premise. The film only went on for another three or so minutes anyway. Where was the bride’s family in all this? Well, they had already had a full showing of the video the day before, but were sworn to secrecy.
So they acted as normal as they could until the DVD started, then just shot daggers with their eyes. Once the film was over, the father went to the altar with his wife and addressed the family of the groom. He told them the following: “Our daughter could have accepted that you do not like her, and had tried for years to get a good relationship with all of you, but to no avail. She was either insulted or shut down. So the couple has decided your side of the family does not deserve to be at the wedding. I hereby inform you that there will not be a wedding today at all.” He paused.
“Months ago, they changed everything to a different date. My daughter and your son have married a week ago and let you believe the wedding would be today. That way we could ensure there are no further evil plans to ruin this young couple’s wedding, and we all had a wonderful time. Without any of you there, it was a day of joy, and a day where everybody was happy for the couple and supportive. Right now they are already on their honeymoon, and will return in four weeks. Since the wedding was so much smaller than originally planned, they had a way bigger budget for that.
Once they return, they do not want any contact with any of you for a year. After that, they are ready to get into contact again under certain requirements, which you will be told once the year is over.” “ANY attempt to contact them in any form leads to the perpetrator’s year to start again at zero. I suggest you take the year to reflect on your behavior, and decide what is more important to you; to have “friend” in your life, or to treat my daughter badly, because right now he is ready to cut contact for good.
But I talked him into giving you one last chance.” Friends and family stayed very silent during this speech, probably shocked and embarrassed into silence. For what it’s worth, yes, the mother-in-law was not the only one in the family treating the bride badly, but she was the reason for it. They are back in contact with most of the family, but definitely not with the mother-in-law. After the year was over, some sheepishly apologized and told the couple about all the lies they were told. Now the mother-in-law is a pariah for at least 80% of the family. Story credit: Reddit / hicctl