Channel Nine
From the outset, Married At First Sight Australia’s Alissa Fay and David Momoh seem like the perfect match.
Smart, accomplished and good looking, they tick a lot of each other’s boxes.
But no-one could have been prepared for this bride and groom’s wedding day disaster!
One of this season’s firecrackers, paediatric nurse and social media manager Alissa, 33, is the first to admit, “You either love me or you don’t.”
“I am a lot. I’m such a high energiser bunny,” she declares.
“I’m confident enough to know that I’m not going to be liked by everybody.”
Having been single since splitting with her boyfriend of six years close to a year ago, the South Australian beauty is clearly still nursing a broken heart.
“Triggered” by the experience, she breaks down as she reflects on being alone after things ended with the man she thought she would marry following his lack of commitment.
Nigerian born e-commerce product manager David, 31, who hails from Queensland, feels he has a lot to prove to a partner.
A rap artist for the last decade, he’s not short of female attention, though he insists you shouldn’t judge this book by its cover.
“I feel like a lot of women think I’m just a womanising party boy and they get put off,” he says.
Eager to settle down with the right woman, he’s respectful and principled, a man of faith, and has put his full trust in the experts to find him his dream woman.
Inspired by his parents, who have been together for more than 30 years, David is willing to do the work for the right person.
Looking for his “equal”, someone “strong but not self-centred”, on paper, Alissa seems like his perfect match.
“She’s gotta be fit, nice booty, and I’m also hoping she’s a calm, kind person,” David says.
“Peace. What man doesn’t want peace?” he adds, hopeful his bride isn’t too loud and certainly isn’t doing shots before the wedding… which, of course, she is!
Displaying some “bridezilla-like” behaviour while getting ready for the ceremony, Alissa’s true colours come out when she halts proceedings.
As the celebrant asks if anyone objects to the marriage, the bride herself chimes in.
“I’m really, really sorry, I don’t think I can marry you,” she says, to audible gasps.
“Yep. I completely understand,” a shellshocked David says, nodding. “It’s completely understandable.”
“Not until you get on one knee and propose to me first,” she continues.
While laughter fills the room, it quickly becomes clear that this is no joke.
David’s eyes practically bulge out of his head at the request! “We’ll see. Eventually,” he reasons. “It will happen, eventually, for sure.”
After a tense back and forth which seems to last a lifetime, David finally realises there will be no wedding if he doesn’t show his “commitment” by proposing.
While Alissa’s bridesmaids urge him to step up as Alissa has been through a lot, David’s friends are fuming, worried that Alissa will “eat him up”.
Adamant he will be “forfeiting” their arrangement if she insists on holding firm, David eventually crumbles.
Taking her hand, he drops to one knee as Alissa’s family and friends cheer – his own loved ones stony-faced.
“That felt like a red flag to me,” David admits to the camera.
“Ugh, you’re gonna be hard work,” says Alissa.
As her vows finally get underway, Alissa’s dreams of a “big, beautiful life” complete with all the trimmings are reflected by a look of sheer terror on David’s face.
That is, until she finishes her shopping list of dealbreakers and begins speaking from the heart about the heartbreak that has led her to this experiment.
By the end, David is smitten. “I felt a chemistry,” he said.
It’s a shame David’s nearest and dearest don’t agree.
“She’s absolutely gorgeous, but personality… looks only get you so far,” his friend Melissa warns. “I don’t think Alissa’s the one for David, no,” Adds pal Jasmine,
Are MAFS’ Alissa and David still together?
Almost since the get-go, Alissa and David’s relationship has come under fire, with fellow brides Gia and Brook calling Alissa out as fake and theatrical. And they’re not buying into her story of being in a perfect marriage.
While they certainly appear to be going strong and building a solid connection, there have been no real indications as to whether Alissa and David are still together post-filming.
Rumours have abounded, however, that perhaps Alissa wasn’t on the show for the right reasons.
“Everyone will understand when they watch MAFS, because it was very obvious what she was there for,” an insider told Chattr. “She was only there for her influencing career, she wasn’t genuine.”
The source noted that David was “gutted” as his intentions were pure.
In recent episodes, the couple became aware of some particularly nasty text messages doing the rounds, in which Bec called them derogatory names.
While they seemingly got over this latest drama after calling Bec out during the Dinner Party, Alissa couldn’t move past it.
“Alissa said herself that, with the bullying stuff, she was a shell of herself in the experiment,” David, 31, tells TV WEEK.
“Then things got better and she became friends with Bec and the bullies and they were hanging out together. She came out to a different side of herself – and then things just changed.”
These friendships, paired with an unsettling Homestay with Alissa’s family in Adelaide, left David feeling like he “wanted to leave”.
“I gave 100 per cent to the experiment. There were red flags from the beginning – like the ‘get down on one knee’ thing – but I decided to push through because I didn’t want to repeat prejudices I might have on the outside. But I was at my limit,” he tells us.
According to the MAFS Funny podcast, Alissa abruptly quit the show before the Final Vows. While she was convinced by producers to return, she did so only to break David’s heart at their Final Vows ceremony.
“She read out her vows, which were apparently quite brutal, and in them she said how her and David, they have no future outside of the experiment,” host Josh Fox alleges.
“This apparently left David so furious and kind of blindsided that he just threw his vows down on the ground, refused to read them and stormed off set, and that was it, done, the end.”
Of course, we’ll have to stay tuned to see whether that does happen or not. Can you watch all the action here.
