My hair is pink. Two weeks before my wedding. Hours before my wedding shower. Where pictures will be taken. Pink.

Yes, you read that correctly: pink. It can be fixed. It WILL be fixed. Too much lowlight and not enough base color. The wrong choice of lowlight, which has far too much magenta in it and not enough copper. I have now washed it 7 times with V05 clarifying shampoo, which I bought at Safeway for 99 cents. It’s pure sulfates. It could strip paint from a dresser. I watched the pink come out of my hair and swirl down the shower drain. Some of it, not all of it.

First, let me tell you that I love my hairstylist. I have, in the past, been a stylist-hopper. But Marie has been different. I met her at a salsa event five years ago–she’s also a dancer. She has cute hair, and I asked her who cuts it because I was hopping from salon to salon, hoping to stumble upon someone who is good at cutting super-straight hair. Turned out she’s a stylist. She’s been with me through bad boyfriends, through meeting Steve, through salsa dramas (yes, there are salsa dramas). She’s helped me grow my hair out to my shoulders, then helped me find the awesome style I have now. I love her.

I usually color my own hair. I use a level 7 copper-gold color with level 20 developer, and it fades out to a copper-gold shade after a few washes. Total cost: $8 plus an hour of my time. And occasionally a towel. Today’s bill: $150, including a trim.

Marie has colored my hair twice before, when I splurged on highlights and lowlights. The color was perfect–the first time chocolate lowlights and golden highlights mixed through my favorite copper base, the second a deep purple subbed in for the chocolate. When Marie does my color, it stays vibrant for months instead of weeks. I only wish I could afford to have her color it all the time.

Today was the big day: wedding cut and color. We went back and forth over the color book, choosing the right blend. Marie painstakingly applied the 3 different colors to my hair. She washed. She styled. I blanched at the color. Even in the dim salon lights it looked burgundy, not copper. “Wash it a few times and then call me,” she said. She strategized in her head what to do if the shampoo didn’t fade the burgundy: maybe add a bunch more highlights and tone them copper, or worst-case, strip the color and start over, trashing my hair in the process. I kept my chin up until I got home and looked at the color under my bright bathroom lights. The ones that simulate daylight, as in the light that will be shining on my head 14 days from now on my wedding day. And my hair? Pink.

I washed, and washed and washed some more. I got out of the shower, towel-dried, then got back in and washed it three more times. I stopped because my fingers were pruny. I styled it (L O V E the cut, with more squared off bangs this time). And I stood in the kitchen under the light and called Steve over. “It’s pink. My hair is pink,” I said, my lip quivering. He bit his lip, trying not to laugh at me. Which of course made me cry. It’s only hair, and it can be fixed, and I cried as I called Marie on her cell phone, leaving her a teary message about how my hair is pink and please, please call me because we have to fix it.

So now, I’ve gone on and on about my pink hair for over 600 words. If it weren’t my wedding coming up, I’d ride it out. Actually, I’d probably kind of like the pinkness of it, just as I loved the purple lowlights we did last summer, because I look pretty conservative when I’m not. It’s a twist, like my tattoos. Something surprising. Except not on my wedding day.

I’m almost laughing at the pinkness. I am not freaking out. Not yet.

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UPDATE: Marie and I are meeting Monday night after work to fix it. And another 5 washings this morning have 20% more of the pink out. No more tears!