Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan at their wedding ceremony in Palo Alto, Calif., Saturday, May 19, 2012. The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg’s backyard before fewer than 100 guests, who all thought they were there to celebrate Chan’s graduation.
Saturday, May 19, 2012. A day after taking his company public, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg added a “Life Event” on Facebook, posting a photo that shows him wearing a suit and tie with the knot loosened rather than his trademark hoodie. Standing next to him in the picture is a woman in a white gown and veil. Above the photo are the words “Married Priscilla Chan.”
Status update!
Mark married his longtime sweetheart, Priscilla Chan on Saturday — but surprisingly, didn’t add a “Relationship Status” to his Facebook page. Zuckerberg just added a “Life Event” on Facebook
The photo had been “liked” by 522205 people at the time of filing this copy. Chan’s Facebook page updated her status as married to Mark Zuckerberg.
Screen grab of Priscilla Chan’s Facebook page and relationship status after she married Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday.
The nuptials capped a busy week for the couple. Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on Monday, the day Zuckerberg turned 28. Zuckerberg’s company went public Friday, raising his wealth to a staggering $20 billion. To be precise, he is now worth $19.25 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zucherberg and Pricilla playing with their dog ‘Beast’.
The wedding attendees went to Zuckerberg’s home believing they were attending a graduation celebration for Chan, but were happily surprised by the change of occasion. The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg’s backyard before fewer than 100 guests, including Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Zuckerberg designed his bride’s ring featuring “a very simple ruby. The couple was planning the wedding for months but wanted to wait until after Chan’s graduation. She is a pediatrician now. The couple met at Harvard and has been together for more than nine years. Chan is a native of Braintree, Massachusetts, and attended high school in nearby Quincy. She graduated Harvard in 2007 then taught science to fourth and fifth graders at the Harker School in San Jose for two years before starting medical school. Zuckerberg, already the world’s youngest paper billionaire, turned 28 on Monday and is reaping the rewards from an unlikely beginning in his dorm room in Harvard.
Mark turned vegetarian in 2011. Food was served family-style and included dishes from the couple’s favorite Palo Alto sushi restaurant. The couple served Burdick Chocolate “mice” for desert — they had eaten the chocolates that are in the shape of mice on their very first date..
Even after the IPO, Zuckerberg remains Facebook’s single largest shareholder, with 503.6 million shares. And he controls the company with 56 percent of its voting stock. The site, which was born in a dorm room eight years ago, has grown into a worldwide network of almost a billion people. Zuckerberg founded Facebook at Harvard in 2004.He was selected as Time’s Person of the Year in 2010, at age 26. Less than a decade later, he was ranked 14th on Forbes’ list of richest Americans, ahead of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
“Seems hard to believe that @Facebook could be worth that much–be careful if you invest. And Mark Zuckerberg–get a pre-nup,” real estate mogul Donald Trump advised on Twitter earlier in the week.
Zuckerberg was portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in the award-winning film The Social Network, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. The film also starred Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Brenda Strong, Justin Timberlake and Rashida Jones.