An Australian woman has canceled her wedding after realizing a fake wedding ceremony she attended for a social media prank was actually real, reports BBC.
The bride said that her partner was an influencer who convinced her to attend the ceremony as a “prank” for his Instagram account.
She only discovered that the marriage was genuine when she tried to use it to obtain permanent residency in Australia.
A Melbourne judge granted the annulment after accepting that the woman had been tricked into marriage, in a decision released on Thursday.
The strange case began in September 2023, when the woman met her partner on an online dating platform. They started dating in Melbourne, where they were living at the time.
In December of the same year, the man proposed to the woman, and she accepted.
Two days later, the woman attended an event with the man in Sydney. He was told it was a “white party” – where the guests would be wearing white clothes – and he was told it was a white dress.
But when they arrived, she was “shocked” and “angry” to find no other guests present, except her partner, a photographer, the photographer’s friend and a party, according to her deposition cited in the documents of the court
“So when I got there, and I didn’t see anyone in white, I asked: “What’s going on?” He took me aside and told me that he is organizing a joke wedding for his social networks, more precisely for Instagram, because he wants to raise his content and wants to start monetizing his Instagram page, “said the woman.
She said she accepted his explanation because “he was a social media person” and had more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. She also believed that a civil marriage would only be valid if it took place before a court.
However, she remained concerned. The woman called a friend, but her friend “laughed” and told her that it would be okay, because if it was true, they should have filed a notice of intention to marry first, which they did not do.
Calmly, the woman went through the ceremony where she and her partner exchanged wedding vows. She stated that she was happy at the time to “play theater” to “make everything seem real”.
Two months later, his partner asked him to add him as a dependent on his application for permanent residence in Australia. They are both foreigners.
When told she couldn’t because they weren’t technically married, she revealed that their wedding ceremony in Sydney had been genuine, according to the woman’s testimony.
The woman later found her marriage certificate and discovered a notice of intent to marry that had been lodged a month before their trip to Sydney – before they were engaged – which she said she had not signed. According to court documents, the signature on the notice bears little resemblance to the woman’s.
“I’m angry that I didn’t know it was a real marriage, that he lied from the beginning, and that he wanted me to add it to my application,” he said.
In his defense, the man stated that “they both agreed to the circumstances” and that, after his proposal, the woman agreed to marry him in an “intimate ceremony” in Sydney.
