Disneyland Paris workers were horrified to find a large wedding they were hosting was between a man and a 9-year-old girl — with the groom and child-bride’s mom arrested in what is now thought to have been a sick $150,000 social media stunt.
The French amusement park had been hired early Saturday for the ceremony in front of the Sleeping Beauty castle, with no forewarning that the bride was just a child, Le Parisien reported.
Some 300 guests and a string quartet arrived at around 5 a.m., before the park was open for regular tourists — with horrified employees only then seeing how young the bride was, BFMTV reported.
The “scared and confused” little girl was wearing a wedding dress and five-inch heels “taped to her feet,” Le Parisien reported.
Staff called police, who arrested four of those involved — including the would-be groom, a 22-year-old British national, BFMTV said.
They also arrested the 41-year-old mother of the 9-year-old girl, both of who had arrived in Paris from Ukraine two days before the sick ceremony, according to the report.
Police also arrested two Latvian nationals, a 24-year-old woman recruited to play the role of the bride’s sister, and a 55-year-old recruited to act as her father, BFMTV reported.
“The latter, who initiated the call to Disneyland Paris security, explained that he had been recruited to play the role of the bride’s father for [$13,840] and had discovered at the last minute that the bride was 9 years old,” the deputy prosecutor of Meaux said in a statement.
French prosecutors are looking at whether the wedding was a sick stunt for social media — one that cost at least $150,000.
An ad was published online days earlier asking for extras, including 200 adults and 100 children aged between 5 and 15 to take part in a high-end wedding rehearsal, according to BFMTV.
The oblivious extras met in Paris at around 4 a.m. on Saturday morning where a bus was waiting to take them to Disneyland. But at 6 a.m., park staff asked them to leave.
“We all thought we were going to attend a wedding… Everyone was stunned, no one expected it,” one of the hired extras told Le Parisien.
“Disneyland did things very well. They canceled everything as soon as they realized the bride was a child. We were shocked to see that,” they continued.
Around $150,000 was spent on hiring out the amusement park and paying for extras, while the groom’s appearance had been altered, according to BFMTV.
“The investigations, including the medical examination of the minor, a Ukrainian national, showed that she had not been subjected to any violence or coercive acts,” the prosecutor’s office said, sggesting it was all “a set-up.”
Two people, the fake groom and the fake bride’s sister, remain in custody and have been charged with “fraud and breach of trust” against Disneyland Paris, which has also filed a complaint against the pair, BFMTV reported.
Both were scheduled to appear in court in the town of Meaux on Monday as part of the opening of a judicial investigation.
Disneyland Paris said it was” fully cooperating with the authorities in their investigation.”:
