Pictured: Hero groom jumps into river to save drowning child

A Canadian groom has been hailed a hero after he abandoned his wedding photoshoot to rescue a young boy from drowning.

Clayton Cook was dressed to impress alongside his new wife, Brittany, when he noticed three young children playing dangerously close to a river in a Cambridge, Ontario.

"For several minutes these kids were following us, and I was just keeping an eye on them because they were standing close to the water," he told BBC.

As his wife had her solo shots taken, he noticed three children had quickly turned into two.

"I saw the boy in the water struggling to keep his head up, that's when I jumped down,” he added.

"I just kind of plucked him out and he was okay."

While they weren’t exactly the photos he had planned to take, wedding photographer Darren Hatt quickly turned the camera towards the heroic groom, capturing a series of incredible shots that quickly went viral.

Brittany initially thought her new husband had just jumped into the river as a joke before he lifted the soaking youngster back onto solid ground.

"That's Clay to me…It's something he would just instinctively do,” she told CTV.

Despite being a little shaken, the boy then made his way of with his sister unscathed.