IT looks like a beautiful, elegant photograph of a bride and groom but there are two reasons this may be one of the saddest wedding pictures ever taken.

One is that the young groom is dying and two is that his beautiful bride is actually an inflatable sex doll.

The surprisingly tasteful wedding pictures have gone nuts on Chinese social media but netizens are divided on whether they are real or yet another cynical viral marketing campaign.

According to CCTV, the unidentified man is a 28-year-old Beijing resident suffering from a terminal illness (reportedly cancer) who wanted to experience a top-of-the-range wedding shoot before he died.

So he bought a realistic inflatable sex doll and a wedding dress and arranged for her (it?) to be professionally styled and made up before tying the knot.

“Some netizens recently revealed that the man is actually suffering from a deadly cancer,” CCTV reported.

“In order not to hurt other people’s feelings, he chose to marry an artificial doll instead of a real person.”

It is not the first time a terminally ill person has turned to an artificial doll to fulfil a dying wish. In May, another Chinese man sent social media into meltdown after he posted pictures of child-sized doll he bought in place of the daughter he would never have.

“Two years ago, Song Bo was diagnosed with a serious illness which gave him constant headaches and brought upon depression,” Rocket News reported.

“Convinced he would never marry or have children, Song was browsing the internet one day when he stumbled upon a listing on China’s online shopping site Taobao that was to give him new hope.

“Song bought a child-sized love doll, just 145cm tall and now takes her everywhere with him. (He) lives with his mother, who apparently did not object to her son bringing the $3117 doll into their lives. He treats the doll as a daughter, and has named her Xiao Die (‘little butterfly’). Wherever he goes, Little Butterfly goes too.”