A judge ruled that the woman ‘did not provide real consent’ after she agreed to take part in a fake Instagram wedding – only to later discover she had been duped into a genuine marriage
An unwitting bride has been left ‘furious’ after finding out that an Instagram stunt wedding was real.
The woman had agreed to take part in the ceremony as a filmed “prank” for his social media – only to discover the marriage was genuine when he tried to use it to gain permanent residency in Australia. She has since applied successfully to a judge in Melbourne to have the marriage annulled, after the judge agreed she had been tricked into getting married.
The woman first met the groom on an online dating platform in September 2023, before they began seeing each other more regularly. He proposed to her in December the same year, and two days afterwards she joined him at an event in Sydney, which he told her was a “white party”.
According to court documents reported by the BBC, she arrived at the party and was quickly left “shocked” and “furious” to find that the only people in the room were the man, a photographer, the photographer’s friend and a celebrant. She said: “So when I got there, and I didn’t see anybody in white, I asked him, ‘What’s happening?’.
“And he pulled me aside, and he told me that he’s organising a prank wedding for his social media, to be precise, Instagram, because he wants to boost his content, and wants to start monetising his Instagram page.”
The woman called a friend who ‘laughed off’ her concerns about the ceremony, and told her she would have had to have filed notice of intended marriage prior to the date if it was real. She then went along with the ceremony in front of the camera, which included the exchanging of wedding vows and a kiss.
Two months later, the man asked her to add him as a dependant in her application for permanent residency. She told him she couldn’t as they were not married – at which he revealed that their Sydney ceremony had in fact been legally binding.
She went on to uncover their marriage certificate alongside a notice of intended marriage, signed with what court documents described as a fake signature with little resemblance to her own. The woman said: “I’m furious with the fact that I didn’t know that that was a real marriage, and the fact that he also lied from the beginning, and the fact that he also wanted me to add him in my application.”
In court filings, the man argued that both of them “agreed to these circumstances” and that she had agreed to marry him at an “intimate ceremony” after their proposal. But the judge, annulling the marriage last October, ruled that the woman had been “mistaken about the nature of the ceremony performed” and “did not provide real consent”.
