Bride's fury after Instagram stunt wedding turns out to be real

An Australian woman has applied to annul her marriage after realizing that a social media stunt wedding she participated in was actually legally valid. The unsuspecting bride stated that her partner, a social media influencer, had convinced her to participate in the wedding as a "prank" for his Instagram account.

She only discovered the wedding was real when her partner attempted to use the marriage to obtain permanent residency in Australia. A judge in Melbourne, accepting that the woman had been deceived into the marriage, issued a ruling on Thursday granting the annulment.

This bizarre case began in September 2023 when the woman met her partner on an online dating platform. They began dating regularly in Melbourne, where they were both 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 in Sydney with the man. She was told it would be a "white party," where attendees would wear white clothing, and was instructed to bring a white dress.

But when they arrived, she was "shocked" and "angry" to discover that there were no other guests besides her partner, a photographer, a friend of the photographer, and a wedding celebrant. According to her testimony cited in court documents, she said, "When I got there and saw no one wearing white, I asked him, 'What's going on?' He pulled me aside and told me that he was organizing a prank wedding for his social media, specifically Instagram, because he wanted to increase his content and start making money through his Instagram page."

She stated that she accepted his explanation because "he was a social media person" with over 17,000 followers on Instagram. She also believed that only civil marriages held in court were valid. Despite this, she still felt concerned. The woman called a friend to voice her concerns, but the friend "laughed it off," saying it was fine because if it were real, they would have had to file a notice of intended marriage first, which they had not.

Reassured, the woman participated in the ceremony, where she and her partner exchanged vows and kissed in front of the camera. She said she was happy to "play along" and make it "look real" at the time. Two months later, her partner asked her to add him as a dependent to her application for permanent residency in Australia. Both of them are foreign nationals.

According to the woman's testimony, when she told him she could not do so because they were not technically married, he revealed that their wedding ceremony in Sydney was real. The woman later found their marriage certificate and discovered a notice of intended marriage, which had been filed a month before their trip to Sydney, even before they were engaged, and which she said she had not signed. According to court documents, the signature on the notice bore little resemblance to the woman's signature.

"I was very angry because I didn't know it was a real marriage, and he lied from the start, and he also wanted me to add him to my application," she said. In the man's testimony, he claimed they "both agreed to the circumstances," and that after the proposal, the woman agreed to marry him in a "private ceremony" in Sydney.

The judge ruled that the woman was "mistaken about the nature of the ceremony that was conducted" and that she "did not genuinely consent to her participation" in the marriage. "She believed she was performing. She referred to the event as a ‘prank’. It was entirely reasonable for her to act as the bride in the ceremony in question in order to enhance the credibility of a video depicting a valid legal marriage," he stated in his ruling.

The marriage was declared null and void in October 2024.