Brittany Higgins is expected to marry her partner David Sharaz in a lavish wedding ceremony on Saturday that will likely surpass the six-figure mark.
The former Liberal staffer is set to exchange vows with Mr Sharaz at The Valley Estate in the Currumbin Valley on the Gold Coast later today.
The grand venue requires a minimum $47,750 to hire out and is described on the owners’ website as “palatial yet intimate”.
On Saturday morning Ms Higgins was reportedly spotted in pink silk pyjamas with what appeared to be her wedding gown draped over her shoulder after checking out of a Gold Coast hotel with her bridal party.
The garment bag revealed the gown was made by luxury Adelaide-based couture dressmaker Paolo Sebastian.
Custom wedding gowns by the brand typically sell for between $20,000 to $30,000 and the label has also created dresses for the likes of Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry.
According to the Daily Mail Australia, the couple’s wedding invitation referred to ‘The Sharazs’, but it is unclear if Ms Higgins will formally change her last name.
The couple officially moved abroad in December after purchasing a chateau property in a secluded village in southwest France but have opted to wed in front of family and friends in Australia.
The fairy-tale wedding day comes after years of setbacks for Ms Higgins after she was raped in Parliament House by disgraced Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann.
Mr Sharaz proposed to Ms Higgins at Byron Bay on New Year’s Eve in 2022 months after the former political staffer was paid about $2.4 million by the Commonwealth in compensation over her claims of sexual assault at Parliament House.
The media was made aware of Ms Higgins’ impending wedding date after the lawyer in her ongoing defamation suit with Senator Linda Reynolds asked the court to postpone a court filing deadline until after the wedding ceremony.
Senator Reynolds, who was Ms Higgins’ employer at the time of the rape, is suing her former employee and Mr Sharaz over a number of defamatory social media posts suggesting the Liberal Senator and her staff tried to cover up the assault.
Senator Reynolds was given a boost earlier in April after the judge overseeing Mr Lehrmann’s separate defamation case found allegations of a cover-up were “objectively short on facts, but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies”.
“Trying to particularise it during the evidence was like trying to grab a column of smoke,” Justice Michael Lee wrote.
In a statement after the ruling, Senator Reynolds spoke of the pain inflicted on her and her former chief of staff Fiona Brown as a result of the claims pushed by Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz, saying her reputation had been “destroyed” and her health “seriously and irreparably compromised”.
Mr Lehrmann yesterday filed his appeal in the Federal Court to challenge the defamation judgment.