Luke forgot the rings. He didn’t forget them in a drawer at home or leave them in a jacket pocket — he forgot them in a way that required a whole sequence of events to unfold on national television before anyone had the rings. This is how MAFS Australia Season 13 introduced itself, and it set a tone that the series maintained with considerable discipline across its entire run. The weddings were beautiful. The venues were genuinely impressive. The behaviour was, as ever, something to behold.
Season 13 brought nine original couples, then added more mid-experiment as the show’s producers apparently looked at the existing level of chaos and decided it needed reinforcement. What followed was a series of honeymoons sent to locations ranging from a luxury superyacht wedding on Sydney Harbour to a glamping retreat in rural New South Wales — a range that says something about either the budget allocation or the expert matching process, possibly both.
A Superyacht, a Gothic Mansion, and a Beach at Maroubra
Season 13 had arguably the most varied wedding venue selection the show has produced. Rachel and Steven — the series’ oldest couple, who approached the whole thing with an admirable combination of hope and realism — said their vows aboard The Jackson, a luxury superyacht on Sydney Harbour. The harbour as a wedding backdrop is almost unfairly good: the Opera House in one direction, the Bridge in the other, the water doing that particular Sydney sparkle that seems specifically engineered to make everyone look better than they feel. If you’re going to marry a stranger, a superyacht on Sydney Harbour is the way to do it.
Brook and Chris married at Swifts, a heritage-listed gothic revival mansion in Sydney’s Darling Point — a suburb where the harbour views are so relentless they stop being a feature and start being a given. The house dates to the 1870s and has the kind of architectural confidence that comes from never having needed to justify itself. It’s now one of Sydney’s most sought-after event venues, which means if you want to visit, you’ll need either a wedding invitation or considerable advance planning.
Gia and Scott married on the beach at Maroubra — a decision that either sounds wonderfully relaxed or slightly underfunded depending on your perspective, though Maroubra’s open ocean beach has an unruly, genuine quality that the manicured harbour venues don’t quite replicate. They subsequently exited the experiment, which given their honeymoon destination — Townsville, Queensland — may have been a relief to at least one of them.
The final wedding of the series took place at Jonah’s Restaurant & Boutique Hotel on Palm Beach, one of Sydney’s most quietly celebrated clifftop escapes — fourteen rooms, a restaurant with a view that stretches to Barrenjoey Lighthouse, and a level of discretion that makes it popular with people who want to be somewhere beautiful without being anywhere conspicuous. The Eveleigh by The Grounds in Eveleigh brought the industrial heritage aesthetic to a heritage-protected railway workshop, with The Grounds of Alexandria’s signature lush, overgrown styling applied to an event space that seats up to five hundred. Silvergum Stables at Stanwell Tops sits on the Illawarra escarpment south of Sydney, with sweeping views across the Pacific and the kind of rural glamour that photographs well at any time of year. Centennial Park, where one ceremony was filmed, remains one of Sydney’s great free pleasures regardless of season.
The Honeymoons: Where Couples Are Sent to Sort It Out
Brook and Chris headed to the Hunter Valley — New South Wales’ wine region, two hours north of Sydney, where the vines run in orderly rows and the cellar doors open early enough that you can technically call it lunch. The Hunter isn’t Napa or Bordeaux, but it doesn’t need to be: Semillon, Shiraz, and a cheese board on a veranda in the afternoon light is its own perfectly complete argument. As honeymoon settings go, it rewards people who like to slow down — which may or may not describe the couple sent there. The wines are excellent. The intention is sound. Whether the couple actually connected is a matter of record.
Bec and Danny were dispatched to Fiji, specifically the Yatule Resort & Spa on the Coral Coast of Viti Levu — coral reef snorkelling, beachfront bures, the kind of resort where the staff remember your name by day two and have genuinely seen enough relationship drama that nothing surprises them anymore. Bec and Danny were among the more straightforward matches of the series, which on MAFS means they only had a moderate number of significant disagreements. Fiji, to its credit, provides enough distraction — tropical water, white sand, accessible dive sites — to smooth over moderate disagreements entirely.
Alissa and David went to Mount Buller, Victoria’s alpine village, staying at the Breathtaker Hotel & Spa — all fireplaces, mountain air, and the particular quiet that comes from being above the snowline. Mount Buller in winter is a different country from coastal Australia: genuinely cold, ski lifts operating, the kind of place where après-ski becomes a legitimate activity rather than an aspiration. Whether the couple used their time there productively is a matter of record, but the venue itself is objectively excellent if you enjoy being somewhere that forces actual conversation.
Rachel and Steven escaped to Evamor Valley in Mudgee — a luxury glamping retreat set among the vineyards of another of New South Wales’ wine regions, complete with a private hot tub under the stars and tastings at Lazy Oak Vineyard. Mudgee is the Hunter Valley’s quieter, slightly less self-conscious sibling: excellent wine, fewer day-trippers, the kind of place you feel like you’ve discovered even though it has been there the whole time. It’s an inspired honeymoon choice, and one of the more genuinely romantic destinations the show has deployed. For two people meeting for the first time at the altar, it’s also an almost unfairly sophisticated setting in which to figure out whether you actually like each other.
Mel and Luke — Luke of the forgotten rings — were sent to Rumi on Louth, a luxury island retreat near Port Lincoln in South Australia. Port Lincoln sits at the tip of the Eyre Peninsula, flanked by the Spencer Gulf on one side and the Great Australian Bight on the other, and it produces some of the country’s finest seafood. The island retreat offers a combination of absolute seclusion and activities that include a pizza-making class and wine tasting, which is precisely the kind of honeymoon that should, in theory, allow two people to get to know each other without the weight of the outside world bearing down. Luke arrived to the wedding without rings. He arrived to Rumi on Louth without them too — metaphorically speaking.
Juliette and Grayson headed to Niramaya Villas & Spa in Port Douglas, Queensland — a boutique villa resort at the gateway to both the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. Port Douglas manages the neat trick of feeling genuinely tropical while also being entirely functional: good restaurants, the Mossman Gorge an hour away, reef trips departing daily. Niramaya specifically is the sort of place you book when you want to feel like you’ve left the world behind without actually losing access to it. For a couple trying to build something real on an accelerated timeline, it’s the kind of backdrop that either brings you together or makes the absence of connection absolutely undeniable.
Rebecca and Steve went to the Whitsundays — the island group off Queensland’s coast that produces an almost unfair number of the country’s most-shared travel photographs. Whitehaven Beach’s silica sand, Hamilton Island’s resort infrastructure, the sailing — it all adds up to a destination that has been convincingly marketed as paradise for decades and has managed, somehow, to keep delivering on it. The Whitsundays are the kind of place you actually want to be, which is more than can be said for some honeymoon destinations.
What the Experiment Actually Revealed
Season 13 sent couples to nine different honeymoon destinations across Australia and beyond, and the consistency of those choices reveals something interesting about how the show thinks about what couples need when they’re six days into a marriage to a stranger. Wine regions, tropical beaches, alpine villages — all of them places where couples are physically forced to spend time together with limited distractions. Whether that actually works is a question Season 13 left largely unanswered, but the destinations themselves were undeniably excellent choices.
Filip proposed to Stella at Final Vows — which, for the uninitiated, is the moment at the very end of the experiment where couples decide whether to continue or part ways. Proposing at Final Vows is the MAFS equivalent of waiting until the last possible moment to submit an assignment. It worked, apparently, which says something about either the sincerity of the gesture or the persuasive power of an extremely well-timed question. Stella and Filip emerged as the season’s genuinely compelling love story, the kind of outcome that keeps people watching despite knowing the statistical improbability of it all.
Season 13 will be remembered for its rings incident, its superyacht, and its reasonably high attrition rate. What it will less obviously be remembered for is its quietly excellent tour of Australian honeymoon destinations — from the alpine cold of Mount Buller to the tropical reef waters of Port Douglas to the wine-soaked intimacy of Mudgee. The show is many things. An inadvertent travel brochure for some of Australia’s best addresses is consistently one of them. If you’re watching MAFS Australia, you’re already halfway to booking a trip somewhere.
Plan Your Trip
From the Whitsundays to the Hunter Valley, the destinations that Season 13 deployed as its backdrops are genuinely worth the journey — with or without the marriage drama. A sailing day around the Whitsundays, a Great Barrier Reef snorkelling trip from Port Douglas, or a Hunter Valley wine tour are all significantly more enjoyable when someone else has arranged the details. Browse curated Australia experiences on Viator — and explore local options below.
The Takeaway
MAFS Australia Season 13 was a masterclass in venue selection and honeymoon logistics. The couples ranged from genuinely compatible to barely civil. The drama was genuine. The locations were — almost uniformly — worth every penny spent on them. If you’re planning a trip to Australia, you could do far worse than follow the broadcast itinerary. And if you’re considering marrying a stranger on national television, at least you now know the destinations will be excellent.
Also planning a trip with MAFS as inspiration? Our MAFS Australia 2025 guide covers Season 12’s destinations — equally dramatic, equally beautiful.
Leave a Reply