Terminally ill Toronto man who crowdfunded 'dream’ wedding dies at 26

A terminally ill man who got to live his dream wedding as a result of a GoFundMe campaign has died.

Solomon Chau, originally of St. Catherines, Ontario, died this week after an eight-month battle with cancer. He was 26.

His wife, Jennifer Carter, took to social media to break the devastating news.

“He fought until his very last breath and had all of his doctors shaking their heads in disbelief at just how much he could handle,” she wrote. “I don’t want to imagine a world without Sol in it. It sure as hell won’t be as bright.”

Chau, a chef who lived in Toronto, had planned on getting married this month. Those plans had to be rescheduled after he was told he had terminal cancer.

He discovered the disease after experiencing excruciating pain in his lower abdomen. Doctors found a cancerous tumour on his liver, which had ruptured. Despite emergency surgery, the disease had spread to the rest of his body and in March, he was given only a few months to live.

Chau and Carter’s family and friends started an online fundraising campaign in order to give them a dream wedding and honeymoon. Their efforts raised more than $50,000. The couple was able to celebrate their wedding at Toronto’s Casa Loma in April.

“His optimism and sense of humour kept both me, and those closest to us, at least moderately sane throughout all of this,” Carter wrote in the post, along with a video of their wedding. “For that, we’ll never be able to thank him enough.”