Here's the deal ... a museum in Lexington, KY is the current home of the infamous Cocaine Bear, a 175-pound black bear that died from a cocaine overdose way back in 1985, and a Kentucky couple chose him to pronounce them husband and wife.

The wedding's going down Monday at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall, where the Cocaine Bear will preside over and affirm the union of Alexandra and Armando.

Also known as Pablo Escobear, the black bear infamously stumbled upon 40 containers of cocaine in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest. The drugs were dropped from a plane piloted by convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton ... and the museum says the retired medical examiner who performed the bear's necropsy told them the bear's stomach was packed to the brim with cocaine when it died.

Cocaine Bear was stuffed by a taxidermist and it changed hands over the years, going from Georgia to Tennessee to Nevada before ending up in a Kentucky museum, where it's now a huge tourist attraction.

The museum's cofounder, Griffin VanMeter, was recently quoted in Roadside America saying, "As long as you feel that the person marrying you -- like Cocaine Bear -- has the authority, then that marriage can be binding here in Kentucky" ... and one couple took him seriously.