While most women turn to ice cream and tissues for the much needed post-breakup comforting, this Chinese woman chose a different way to deal with heartbreak – she went and got herself a fake wedding with the man who dumped her!

The woman, who calls herself ‘Doudou’, is a student in Wenzhou city in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. She told reporters that she’d been swept off her feet by a businessman, 11 years her senior, whom she’d met at a restaurant. “I found him charming and romantic and thought I had met my dream man, and that we would spend the rest of our lives together,” she said.

Unfortunately, Doudou’s dreams were shattered when she discovered that her knight-in-shining-armor was already married. This resulted in a furious row, but she had already fallen for him hard. “I was already in too deep, and didn’t know what to do,” she said.

So the relationship continued for a while, until the man’s wife got suspicious. That’s when he decided that it was all getting too risky and he told Doudou he was leaving her. She was devastated, of course, but then she came up with a unique way of saying goodbye – with a symbolic wedding.

“I have accepted that I am going to lose him, but I didn’t just want to walk out of his life and never see him again,” she explained. “I wanted to have something like an event that would really mark a turning point. That was when I came up with the idea of a kind of symbolic wedding ceremony for the symbolic life that we could have had together.”

On the day of the ‘un-wedding’, the couple dressed up as bride and groom and had a ceremony with special vows – they confessed their love for each other, but mentioned that they would be parting ways. Apparently, they also exchanged rings.

The couple permitted the local media to take pictures of the ceremony and write about them, as long as their faces and real names were not revealed. There weren’t any guests, but they did have a band, a buffet, a wedding cake, and champagne. After the ceremony, they shared a wedding night and then walked away from each other the following morning, to return to their respective lives.

Ye Cheng, the owner of the hotel where the ceremony took place, said: “I must admit it was the smallest ceremony we have ever had, but business is business. They wanted it done in a rush, and I’d received a cancellation so managed to fit them in without any problems. I even had the decorations in place.”

Cheng, who also officiated the ceremony, said that he found it surprisingly moving. “But the man seems to have accepted his other responsibilities and that means the young lady can perhaps move on now and get on with her life, and find a proper partner – one that she doesn’t have to share with somebody else.”