Bride duped into marrying influencer in fake ceremony for followers — but it was actually an elaborate scam

Here comes the bride — but the groom lied.

Most newlyweds get a shiny toaster or a few fat checks in celebration of their holy matrimony.

However, this troubled twosome just got an annulment by request of the “furious” bride, who claims she thought that her wedding ceremony was a social media prank and not a legally binding union.

“He told me that he’s organizing a prank wedding for his social media,” the unnamed woman, a twenty-something from Melbourne, Australia, recently explained to a family court judge, per The Guardian.

“To be precise, Instagram,” continued the bamboozled bride, saying the fella had 17,000 followers. “He wants to boost his content and wants to start monetizing his Instagram page.”

Neither she nor the groom, a Melbourne-based, bisexual man in his 30s, can be named for legal purposes, according to reports.

But Justice Joshua Wilson agreed that the gal had been gulled into marrying the man during a December 2023 “sham” wedding in Sydney as part of a visa scam.

He granted the bride an annulment.

The ill-fated couple initially connected on a dating app in September 2023. They reportedly had their first date at a church the following day.

After three months of dating, the man proposed in December, and she accepted, according to CNN. Two days later, she claimed her new fiancé invited her to a “white party” in Sydney.

However, upon arriving at the venue in a white dress — a number she insisted was not a bridal gown — the woman was “shocked” to learn the man had “organized a wedding.”

“When I got there, and I didn’t see anybody in white, I asked him, ‘What’s happening?’” she told the court, adding that her new beau assured it was nothing more than “a simple prank.”

After agreeing to participate in the supposed stunt, the bride appeared to “enthusiastically” participate in the ceremony, per footage of their nuptials, so says The Guardian.

She insisted, however, that her exuberance was “all an act.”

“We had to act to make it look real,” she said.

The woman — who was not a permanent resident of Australia — ultimately discovered the wedding was, in fact, legal after the man allegedly asked her to add his name to her application for permanent residency. If she’d complied, the filing could also have boosted his chances of also becoming a permanent resident.

She claimed the groom told her he was not a permanent resident and that he’d “organized the marriage to help him.”

Outraged by the con, the bride felt she’d been “lied [to] from the beginning.”

Doubling down on her fury, the woman asserted that she would not get married without her parent’s permission and presence, nor without a bridal gown or a reception party.

But the groom denied that their rushed “I Do’s” were all for digital glory.

Instead, he reportedly testified that immediately after they met, he came out to the bride as bisexual, and that she was “cool with it” and moved into his home.

He signed a notice of intention to marry on November 20, 2023 — a few weeks before popping the question. But the bride, per CNN, denied ever seeing or signing the document.

In regard to the speedy, bare-bones nature of their union, the groom claimed that the wedding was intended to be “intimate” before an “official” ceremony in their home country at a later date, adding that they “both agreed to these circumstances.”

But Wilson wasn’t buying it.

Arguing that it “beggars belief” the bride would marry the groom “less than two days” after accepting his proposal, the judge rejected the groom’s version of events and signed off on the annulment.

“The applicant did not have a single family member or friend present at the alleged wedding ceremony. She was religious,” Wilson wrote. “Precisely why she would participate in a civil marriage and not in a church marriage ceremony went unexplored.”

“It made no sense to me that she would.”