The strange incident 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 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. She was told it would be a “white party” – attendees would wear white – and 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 birthday boy, according to her testimony in court documents.
“So when I got there and didn’t see anybody in white, I asked him, ‘What’s going on?’ He pulled me aside and told me that he is organizing a prank wedding for his social media, Instagram to be exact, because he wants to increase his content and he wants to start monetizing his 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 be valid only if it was concluded in court.
Still, she remained concerned. The woman called a friend and expressed her concerns, but the friend “laughed it off” and said it would be fine because if it was real, they would have to file a notice of intent to marry first, which they didn’t.
Calmed down, the woman went through the ceremony, where she and her partner exchanged wedding vows and kissed in front of the camera. She said she was happy to “play along” at the time to “make it look real”.
Two months later, her partner asked her to add him as a dependent on her application for permanent residence in Australia. Both foreigners.
When she told him she couldn’t because they weren’t technically married, he then 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 intent to marry, filed a month before their trip to Sydney – before they even got engaged – which she said she did not sign. According to court records, the signature on the notices bears little resemblance to the woman’s signature.
“I’m furious that I didn’t know it was a real marriage, and that he also lied from the beginning, and that he also wanted me to add him to my application,” she said. she .
In his evidence, the man claimed 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 “misrepresented the nature of the ceremony” and “did not give real consent to her participation” in the marriage.
“She thought she was acting. She called the event a “joke.” It made perfect sense for her to impersonate the bride throughout the contested ceremony in order to add credibility to the video depicting a legally valid marriage. “, he said in the verdict.
The marriage was annulled in October 2024.
