As Married At First Sight (MAFS) 2025 wraps up for another year, the cast have started to make more and more public appearances as they capitalise on their newfound fame.
With the final episode airing tonight, the MAFS cast landed in Sydney to celebrate the last two episodes, gathering together in two groups to watch the reunion dinner party. Of course, there was the one party where Clint Rice and Jacqui Burfoot got engaged, surrounded by their closest fans (and Dave Hand and Billy Belcher). And there was another party where a bunch of the MAFS cast gathered for their own reunion dinner to watch the reunion dinner.
As someone who has written about MAFS for a worrying amount of years (eight to be exact) when I got an invite to attend a MAFS afterparty featuring some of the cast, well, who was I to say no. The last time I was in a room with a bunch of MAFS people was by accident in 2018 after running into a flock of them at the Coogee Pav. A 2017 groom, whose name sounds like Shmick Murphy, then yelled at me when he found out I was in the media, saying all I do is make up lies for New Idea.
I’ve never worked for New Idea in my life. But I digress…
I put on my best cocktail attire (some random playsuit I bought 10 years ago that I found at the back of my closet), slapped on my best face (Maybelline dream mousse. I’m kidding. Or am I?), and trotted off to Sydney’s Oxford Street at the ungodly hour of 10pm (aka my bedtime) to see what really happens at a MAFS Reunion party.
What attending a MAFS cast party is really like
The Daily Mail put on the event, and many familiar faces attended. While the site had hosted a reunion dinner party for everyone prior, with their very own honesty box too (which you can read about here), not everyone made it from dinner to the afterparty.
Jeff Gobbels, Rhi Disljenkovic, Awhina Rutene and Jamie Marinos were sadly nowhere to be seen post-dinner, but gracing the event were Carina Mirabile, Beth Kelly, Ryan Donnelly, Eliot Donovan, Paul Antoine, Teejay Halkias, Adrian Araouzou, and Tony Mojanovski.
Rumours circulated that Jamie and Awhina ditched the event after Adrian unexpectedly showed up.
So what’s attending an event with the MAFS cast really like? Pretty chaotic.
While some viewers mock the “15 seconds of fame” cast get after appearing on the show, or attempt to dismiss their experiences, there’s no denying having all eyes on you at every waking second would be hard work.
From cameras pointing at them at every moment to people introducing themselves and trying to pull various stars away for chats, there was never a moment where a MAFS star would be left alone.
They mainly stuck together: I didn’t witness Paul or Carina interact personally, but I did ask Paul about his new meme fame with his curiosity taking off on TikTok. “It’s very funny,” he laughed, like a man still kinda in pain about it all. “I did one the other day!”
@araz.twins Get funnier everytime I watch this back 😂 He was genuinely just cuwious! #mafs #marriedatfirstsightaustrailia #mafsuk #mafsaustralia #fyp ♬ original sound – araz.twins
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em as they say.
To be fair to Paul, he was the friendliest groom in attendance. Some were distracted with prowling eyes on every new woman who walked into the bar. Others, were thoroughly enjoying their newfound fame and had eyes only for the cameras tracking their every move. I’ll leave you guys to your own guesses.
An unexpected MAFS friendship blossoms
Perhaps one of the more surprising things to witness was Ryan and Beth actively not hating each other. In fact, they seemed to be getting along just fine and dandy after their infamously frosty partner-swap on the show.
Given the big news that Ryan’s ex Jacqui just got engaged, he was the man of the moment, with everyone wanting to know his thoughts, thoughts he was happy to dish out, but more importantly, our boy just wanted to dance the night away.
As aforementioned, other grooms looked to be on the prowl and skipped chatting with any media or average strangers (aka me) to chat up any good-looking gals in the room. I’d love to tell you if any were successful, but that would mean I’d have to stick around way longer than I wanted to, and I think it could’ve only been interesting watching their attempts if David Attenborough was narrating it.
The party could’ve only been made better if Morena Farino was DJ-ing it.
A room of familiar faces
There’s nothing like a party to bring a bunch of previous reality stars together, and there were notable faces from various seasons of other shows including Fboy Island, The Bachelor, and previous seasons of MAFS.
Suzan Mutesi, a woman who definitely exists and who was definitely on a show once upon a time according to my Google search, was there chatting Paul’s ear off at some stage, with Jane Lu (aka The Lazy CEO) also popping up. Al Perkins, the loveable golden retriever pup from MAFS 2022 was also in attendance.
Some man from Fboy Island told me he was going to apply for MAFS next season, but thinks he’s too young to get married, so he’ll try in a few years. Never give up on your dreams, random man!
I decided to call it quits after about an hour and a half and one free drink that tasted like it came directly from my 2012 goon punch days. If you ever had a goon punch era, you know one is a slippery slope and I had work the next day.
In conclusion: these MAFS participants have worked hard to fill our screens with drama for the last few months – and I definitely didn’t need to be aware of anything that happened past midnight. I’d rather just get a producer’s edit later.
Stream MAFS on 9Now.
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