Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding to Priscilla Chan was full of surprises. The small and intimate ceremony, held in their Palo Alto backyard, caught even their closest friends and family off guard. Fewer than 100 guests showed up thinking they were there to celebrate Chan’s graduation from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. Instead, they witnessed the Facebook founder tie the knot, just a day after the company’s historic IPO on May 19, 2012.
More surprising than the wedding itself was how Zuckerberg broke the news to Chan’s family. Her grandmother, who only speaks Chinese, was let in on the secret in her own language. In a gesture that was both deeply personal and incredibly thoughtful, Zuckerberg had begun learning Mandarin back in 2010, two years before wedding plans were even in sight. His goal? To connect more deeply with Chan, her culture, and her family, according to ABC News. (Chan, for context, is fluent in English, Spanish, and Cantonese.
When the moment came, Zuckerberg informed her grandmother of their engagement in Chinese, leaving her “really shocked.” It wasn’t a grand public stunt, it was private, intentional, and deeply respectful. The founders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have always upheld their personal values and based their close bond on the same. Their wedding too reflected these values, whether through the 40-year-old father of three designing the ring himself, or through the simplicity and sincerity of the ceremony.
From Backyard Vows to Billionaire Gestures-
While the wedding may have been understated, the MMA enthusiast’s language over the years has included some truly over-the-top displays of affection, some money can’t buy, and others only he could afford.
To celebrate an anniversary, the owner of the $300 million Launchpad superyacht collaborated with none other than T-Pain to remix “Get Low” as a surprise for Priscilla. He also threw a vibrant ’70s-themed party for the mother of his three children, cheekily captioning it on social media: “Disco queen wanted a party.”
But even billionaire romance sometimes involves practical compromises. When Priscilla wanted a minivan, the world’s second-richest man, worth $221 billion, went straight to West Coast Customs and commissioned a custom Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT Minivan, a mashup no one saw coming. “Priscilla wanted a minivan, so I’ve been designing something I’m pretty sure should exist,” he explained in a post. And then there’s what might be his most striking tribute yet, a seven-foot Daniel Arsham statue of Priscilla, commissioned by Zuckerberg as an eternal symbol of devotion and wife-worship.
It’s no exaggeration to say that in that moment, Zuckerberg entered a league of his own. We might as well crown him ‘Husband of the Century’. Every other husband likely lost a couple of points that day. As Priscilla Chan once put it, “He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” she told The New Yorker. Not much has changed, except, perhaps, the budget.
Note: At the time of writing, according to Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg is the second-richest person on the planet with a net worth of $242.5 billion.
