MAFS casts TikTok tradie for 2025 season after 'casting crisis'

Filming for the upcoming twelfth season of Married At First Sight has officially kicked off with the wedding ceremonies being filmed across Australia this week. Yahoo Lifestyle can exclusively reveal that one of the 2025 participants hoping to find love - or at least a few more Instagram followers - is ‘TikTok tradie’ Dave Thomas.

The Victorian-based groom runs his own caulking business and has amassed almost 30,000 followers on TikTok posting videos documenting his renovations. The aspiring influencer set all of his social media accounts to private last week including the Instagram page for his business, Silicone Valley Caulking.

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Dave, who is also a bodybuilder and part-time model, was seen getting married to his mystery bride in Sydney on Tuesday.

He is the second groom to be revealed after Daily Mail announced on Tuesday that Perth-based fitness coach Paul Antoine has also been cast in season 12. The 30-year-old is originally from France and previously appeared on Channel 10’s short-lived reality show The Real Love Boat in 2022.

The publication also revealed last week that former Bachelor contestant Sierah Swepstone, who appeared on Jimmy Nicholson’s season in 2021, will be walking down the aisle. The self-proclaimed “tall, horny bogan” joins fitness influencer Rhi Disljenkovic as the two brides who have been identified so far.

'Casting crisis' after groom goes rogue

A show insider told Yahoo Lifestyle last week that production on MAFS’ twelfth season has faced a series of setbacks over the past month which has caused major filming delays. According to our source, there have been several last-minute cast changes as participants have either dropped out or been axed for having “the wrong intentions” and being there solely to promote themselves.

Three weeks ago, one anonymous groom even took to the unofficial Married At First Sight Australia subreddit to boast of their involvement in the show and offered to leak storylines once filming kicked off. Yahoo Lifestyle understands this resulted in an “investigation” to find the aspiring influencer and remove them from the show.

Interestingly, the Reddit thread where they detailed the various stages of the casting process and their interactions with the relationship experts has since been deleted.

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“Every year as the show gets bigger it gets harder to weed out the applicants with the wrong intentions,” a source told us.

“There are too many influencers and aspiring OnlyFans creators seeing the experiment as the easiest way to promote themselves. This year casting really above and beyond to find a mix of interesting people with all kinds of different backgrounds from across Australia inspired by Lucinda Light's popularity.”

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