Walking down the aisle in a couture £300,000 lace-sleeved gown by the Israeli designer, Galia Lahav, Olivia Attwood looked every inch the blushing bride.
It was June 3 2023 and she was marrying her ‘soul mate’, the then-Blackburn Rovers footballer Bradley Dack, at the five-star Bulgari hotel in Knightsbridge in a no expenses-spared wedding.
The luxury venue had been adorned with 10,000 roses and over 25,000 individual flowers.
Sat next to her new husband-to-be, she nervously signed the marriage register as friends and family, including her proud father Kai and mother Jen, watched on.
All these sentimental moments were luckily captured on camera as the reality star had signed a deal with ITV for a 17-episode series, Olivia Meets Her Match, spread across three seasons.
Bosses at the network had invested heavily in the influencer, who found fame on the 2017 series of dating show Love Island, hoping to mould her into ITV’s Golden Girl, tipped to be the next Holly Willoughby.
But the wedding veil has slipped from Ms Attwood, 34, as The Mail on Sunday can reveal there is no official record of the marriage.
Despite viewers of the ITV ‘wedding special’ watching the two lovebirds sign a piece of paper after delivering their vows – with Dack’s best friend Ronnie Vint and Olivia’s younger brother Max – acting as witnesses, the union has not been logged with the General Register Office, the archive of all marriages and civil partnerships for England and Wales.
The wedding was captured on camera as the reality star had signed a deal with ITV for a 17-episode series, Olivia Meets Her Match, spread across three seasons
Yes, the whole show, commissioned by ITV for a ‘significant’ sum of cash, is a sham.
One source familiar with Olivia said: ‘They never married, it was all about the cash, seemingly. Can you believe anything Olivia tells us anymore? Who knows?
‘It will be very disappointing for Olivia’s fans. Her team brokered the deal but she didn’t actually get married. You couldn’t make it up. What a sham, what a huge lie to tell your fans. What a joke.’
Last night friends of Olivia’s attempted to explain why she had misled her viewers into believing she was married.
They said that the Bvlgari hotel didn’t have a marriage licence at the time – something that appears not to be the case today, as its website boasts that the venue can marry couples. Instead, friends of Olivia’s insist that they had intended to legally tie the knot six weeks after their ‘big day’.
Olivia was pictured kissing her KissFM co-host, Pete Wicks, in a Soho hotel last weekend just seven weeks after announcing she was ‘divorcing’ Mr Dack. Pictured together in March last year
The pal said: ‘Despite her best efforts, the wedding planner was unable to turn [a wedding-certified venue] around in time so an appointment was made six weeks after the ceremony to complete paperwork at a registry office near their home in Cheshire.
‘During these six weeks, Olivia uncovered a number of mistruths, which put a stall on following through with the paperwork.
The friend added that although the relationship spanned over a decade and they were both very much in love with one another, but ultimately Olivia was unable to agree to legally bind their union.’
The groom’s response, however, wasn’t so fulsome. Through his new club Gillingham’s press office, Mr Dack simply said ‘no comment’ when approached by the MoS.
Clues as to the non-marriage were available to eagle-eyed viewers of the show, as the document he and Ms Attwood signed appeared to be blank, rather than a Marriage Schedule, which is supposed to have boxes to register the date, place of marriage, full names, occupations and so on.
The MoS visited the City of Westminster Archives Centre where every wedding in the UK is documented but found no trace of the marriage of Olivia Jade Attwood and Bradley Paul Dack marrying anywhere in 2023 or 2022.
Perhaps the only permanent documentation in ink of the pair’s nuptials was the matching tattoos they got on their wedding day. ‘Till death’ was written on Ms Attwood’s arm, while ‘Do us part’ appeared on Mr Dack’s wrist.
It comes as the apparently married Ms Attwood was pictured kissing her KissFM co-host, Pete Wicks in a Soho hotel last weekend, just seven weeks after announcing she was ‘divorcing’ Mr Dack.
For the past three years, the couple have kept up the illusion on podcasts and television shows they are husband and wife, with Ms Attwood adding ‘Dack’ to the end of her professional name – which she has since removed from her social media pages.
On her personal podcast, So Wrong It’s Right, the host had Mr Dack on for an episode titled: ‘Bradley Dack opens up about life as Liv’s husband.’
She said: ‘You are my most requested guest. It was very weird this morning, prepping to interview my husband. What’s it like being married to an absolute queen?’
Dack replied: ‘At times it’s difficult, in a lot of things we’re the same and in others we’re really not.’
Last February, they were guests on Made In Chelsea stars Jamie Laing and Sophie Haboo’s Newly Weds podcast during which Ms Attwood lamented how she found their wedding day ‘traumatising’.
The foursome laughed and swapped wedding stories during the podcast as Ms Attwood said: ‘The engagement – I could do that one hundred times, so good, [but] the rest of it? No. It felt like my lungs were closing in on me every day.
Viewers of the show saw the two lovebirds sign a piece of paper after delivering their vows
She told Buzzfeed the year before, while promoting her dating show Bad Boyfriends with ITV: ‘People are speaking to me and I’m very open about Brad and I and how we got together, I’m kind of an open book and I love talking about dating and past mistakes.’
On her romantic life, the reality star added: ‘It’s all out there for people to see.’
The deception is a massive blow for the channel, which has touted Ms Attwood across all its major TV shows, including making her a regular panellist on Loose Women and a brief stint on This Morning last year.
Mr Dack even appeared on Loose Women and told host Coleen Nolan he wasn’t nervous because ‘we got married on camera’.
Elsewhere, Ms Attwood had also been given three documentaries to front including Getting Filthy Rich, The Price Of Perfection and Olivia Attwood Vs The Trolls.
Ms Attwood was dating Mr Dack in 2017 but joined the Love Island cast after discovering he was cheating. Pictured together in 2021
Most recently, she hosted ITV’s latest reality show, The Heat, a break from her usual documentary format and one step closer to the coveted role of Love Island presenter, a gig it is known Ms Attwood has her eye on.
She was with Mr Dack in 2017 but joined the cast for series three of the popular dating show after discovering he was cheating.
She became known as one of the most hot-headed contestants but found fame by coupling up with fellow contestant Chris Hughes. While they appeared as one of the strongest couples on the show, their relationship didn’t last long outside the Mallorcan villa.
For the past three years, the couple have kept up the illusion on podcasts and television shows they are husband and wife. Pictured together last year
Not, however, before landing a fly-on-the-wall reality show with the ITV series, which ran for one series and largely consisted of their vicious rows before their inevitable split in 2018.
She rekindled with the footballer in 2019 and ITV commissioned Olivia Meets Her Match, which followed the couple, post engagement in 2020 right up until the seemingly real wedding in 2023.
The ‘sham’ marriage has no doubt been lucrative for the couple and Ms Attwood admitted she got Mr Dack back on her podcast again.
Opening for her third series of her podcast in February last year, she said: ‘Our first guest is my husband Bradley Attwood Dack everyone, I’ve brought you in because you rate well.’
And then, now rather embarrassingly, added: ‘You and Pete Wicks rate well.’
ITV have been contacted for comment.