A woman in Australia has annulled her marriage after realizing the fake wedding ceremony she took part in for a social media stunt was actually real.
The unidentified bride said her partner was a social media influencer who convinced her to take part in the ceremony as a “joke” for his Instagram account.
She discovered that the marriage was real only when he tried to use it to get permanent residency in Australia.
A judge in Melbourne granted the annulment after accepting the woman was fraudulently induced to marry, in a ruling released on Thursday.
The bizarre case began in September 2023 when a woman met her partner on an online dating platform. They started seeing each other regularly in Melbourne, where they were then living.
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 clothes – and was told to pack a white dress.
But when they arrived, she was “shocked” and “furious” to find no guests other than her partner, the photographer, the photographer’s friend and the celebrant, according to her statement in court documents.
“So when I got there and I didn’t see anyone in white, I asked him, ‘What’s going on?’ And he pulled me aside and told me that he was having a prank wedding for his social media, Instagram to be precise, because she wants to improve her content and she wants to start monetizing her Instagram page,” she said.
She said she accepted his explanation because “he was a social media person” who had more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. She also believed that a civil marriage would only be valid if it was performed in court.
Still, she remained worried. The woman called a friend and expressed her concern, but the friend “laughed” and said that would be fine because if it was real, they would have to first file a notice of intended marriage, which they didn’t.
Disappointed, the woman went through a ceremony where she and her partner exchanged wedding vows and kissed in front of the cameras. She said at the time she was happy to “play” to “look real”.
Two months later, her partner asked her to add him as a dependent on her application for permanent residence in Australia. Both are foreigners.
When she told him she couldn’t because they weren’t technically married, he revealed that their wedding ceremony in Sydney was real, according to the woman’s testimony.
The woman later found their marriage certificate and discovered a notice of intended marriage handed in a month before their trip to Sydney – before they were even engaged – which she said she did not sign. According to court documents, the signature on the notice bears no resemblance to the woman’s.
“I’m furious that I didn’t know it was a real marriage, that he also lied from the beginning and that he wanted me to add it to my application,” she said. .
In his deposition, the man claimed that “they both agreed to the circumstances” and that after his proposal, the woman agreed to marry him in an “intimate ceremony” in Sydney.
The judge ruled that the woman “made a mistake as to the nature of the ceremony performed” and that she “did not properly consent to her participation” in the marriage.
“She believed she was acting. She called the event a ‘teaser’. It was perfectly logical for her to assume the character of the bride in everything at the controversial ceremony in order to increase the credibility of the video showing a legally valid marriage,” he stated in the verdict.
The marriage was annulled in October 2024.
