An Australian woman has called off her marriage after realizing a fake wedding she participated in for a social media stunt was actually real.
The unknown bride said that her partner is an influential figure on social media, and he convinced her to participate in the ceremony as a joke on his Instagram account.
She only discovered the marriage was real when he tried to use it to obtain permanent residency in Australia.
A Melbourne judge granted the annulment after accepting the woman had been tricked into marriage, in a ruling published on Thursday.
The bizarre case began in September 2023 when the woman met her partner on an online dating platform. They began seeing each other regularly in Melbourne, where they were living at the time.
In December of that year, the man proposed to the woman and she accepted.
Two days later, the woman attended an event with the man in Sydney. She was told it would be a “white party” – where attendees would wear white – and was told to pack a white dress.
But when they arrived, she was “shocked” and “angry” that there were no other guests except her partner, the photographer, the photographer's friend, and one of the revelers, according to her testimony quoted in court documents.
“So when I got there, and I didn't see anyone wearing white, I asked him, 'What's going on?' And he pulled me aside, and told me that he was organizing a fake wedding for his social media, specifically, Instagram, because he wants to boost his content, and he wants to start… Monetizing his Instagram page.
She said she accepted his explanation because he “was using social media” and had more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. She also believed that a civil marriage would only be valid if it was concluded in court.
However, she remained worried. The woman called a friend and expressed her concerns, but the friend “laughed” and said it would be okay, because if it were real, they would have had to file notice of the intended marriage first, which they did not.
After her reassurance, the woman went through the ceremony, where she and her partner exchanged wedding vows and kissed in front of the camera. At the time, she said, she was happy to “play along” to “make it feel real.”
Two months later, her partner asked her to add him as a dependent in her application for permanent residency in Australia. They are both foreigners.
When she told him she couldn't because they weren't technically married, he then revealed that their Sydney wedding was real, according to the woman's testimony.
The woman later found their marriage certificate, and discovered a notice of intended marriage given the month before their trip to Sydney – before they even got engaged – which she said she had not signed. According to court documents, the signature on the notice did not closely resemble the woman's signature.
“I'm angry at the fact that I didn't know this was a real marriage, at the fact that he also lied from the beginning, and at the fact that he also wanted me to add him to my application,” she said. .
In his evidence, the man claimed they had “agreed on these circumstances” and that after he proposed, the woman agreed to marry him in an “intimate ceremony” in Sydney.
The judge ruled that the woman “was mistaken about the nature of the ceremony that took place” and “did not give genuine consent to her participation” in the marriage.
“She thought she was acting. She called the event a 'prank'. It made perfect sense for her to adopt the character of the bride for everything at the contested ceremony in order to enhance the credibility of the video depicting a legally valid marriage.” “, according to the ruling.
The marriage was annulled in October 2024.
