An Australian woman has canceled her wedding after realizing that a fake wedding she staged on social media was real.
The unsuspecting bride said her partner was a social media influencer who convinced her to participate in the event as a “game” for her Instagram account.
He only found out that the marriage was real when he tried to use it to get permanent residency in Australia.
A Melbourne judge upheld the annulment after accepting that the woman had been tricked into marrying, in a decision published on Thursday.
The strange case began in September 2023 when the woman met her partner on an online dating site. They started 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 went to a party with the man in Sydney. He was told that there would be a “white party” – where they would go and wear white colors – and he was told to pack a white dress.
But when they arrived he was “shocked” and “very upset” to find that there were no other guests except his colleague, the photographer, a friend of the photographer and the party, according to his statement cited in court papers.
“When I got there I didn’t see anyone wearing white and I asked him what was going on, he pulled me aside and told me that he was planning a social media wedding. Instagram, because he wants to improve his content, and he wants to start monetizing his Instagram page,” he said.
He said he accepted his explanation that he was a “social media personality” with more than 17,000 followers on Instagram. He also believed that traditional marriage will only work if it is held in court.
Still, he continued to worry. The woman called her friend to express her concern, but her friend “just laughed” and said that it would be okay because if it was true, they should have first filed a notice of the intended marriage, which they did not have.
Confirmed by the knee, the woman proceeded to the ceremony where she and her partner exchanged vows and kissed in front of the camera. He said he was happy at the time to “play together” to “look real”.
Two months later, her partner asked her to add him as a dependent in her application for permanent residency in Australia. Both are immigrants.
When he told her that he couldn’t since they were not married, he then revealed that their marriage in Sydney was real, according to the woman’s testimony.
The woman later obtained their marriage certificate, and found a notice of intended marriage that had been posted a month before their trip to Sydney – before they were engaged – which she said she did not sign. According to court documents, the signature on the declaration does not match the woman’s.
“I’m angry that I didn’t know that it was a real marriage, that he lied from the beginning, and that he wanted me to include him in my proposal,” she said. .
In his speech, the man said “both of them agreed to these conditions” and following his proposal the woman agreed to marry him in a “dating ceremony” in Sydney.
The judge ruled that the woman “was mistaken about the nature of the ceremony” and “did not give genuine consent to her participation” in the wedding.
“He believed he was pretending. He called the event a ‘prank’. It made sense for him to assume the role of a bride in all things in a fake ceremony in order to strengthen the credibility of the video showing the official wedding. ,” he said in the decision.
The marriage was dissolved in October 2024.
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