A woman who thought she was participating in a social media stunt asked a court to annul the “prank marriage” that ended up being real.
A judge in Melbourne, Australia, granted the annulment after determining the man the woman technically married had tricked her into doing so, according to reports from the BBC, The Standard and The Guardian.
Citing an anonymous family court judgment published on Jan. 9, The Standard reported that the Melbourne-based woman in her 20s met the man in his 30s on a dating app in September 2023. Two months later, in December, he invited her to a “white party” in Sydney and told her there that he had set up a “prank” to amplify his Instagram following.
“When I got there, and I didn’t see anybody in white, I asked him, ‘What’s happening?’ ” she told the court, per The Guardian, which added that he had proposed to her only a day prior to this Sydney situation.
“He told me that he’s organizing a prank wedding for his social media. To be precise, Instagram, because he wants to boost his content and wants to start monetizing his Instagram page,” she reportedly continued.
Two months after the event, per the BBC, the man asked the woman if he could be a dependent in her application for permanent residency in Australia, but she said she could not because she believed they were not legally married.
That’s when she realized the marriage was legal and not a “sham,” according to The Guardian, which added that the woman was “furious” for being “lied” to, especially since she noted that she would never get married without her parents’ permission, without them attending the ceremony, without a bridal gown or without having a reception.
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The groom argued in court that the “intimate ceremony” was not a social media stunt and that they were planning to have an official wedding at a later date, which he said the bride knew, The Standard reported.
The outlets noted that the judge, in October, rejected the man’s claims and annulled the marriage after learning about the short engagement and discovering he signed a letter of intent to marry weeks before proposing.
“She believed she was acting. She called the event ‘a prank.’ It made perfect sense for her to adopt the persona of a bride in all things at the impugned ceremony so as to enhance the credibility of the video depicting a legally valid marriage,” the judge said in his judgement, per the BBC.
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