entertainment

Mark Zuckerberg, you may now poke the bride.

The happy couple.

So Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg changed his status to ‘Married’ .

Zuckerberg wed his girlfriend of 9 years, Priscilla Chan, in front of 100 guests at a ceremony at his $7 million Californian home over the weekend.

He then posted this picture on his Facebook timeline to announce the news.

The wedding came just a day after Facebook was floated on the stock exchange – at $104.2 billion – making Zuckerberg, well, really, really rich. (His own worth stands at $19 billion making him the 29th richest person in the world.)

There’s been a bit of talk about the timing of the wedding. Was it planned for the day after the float? Or just coincidental? And was there a pre-nup?

Following the float – and unaware of the impending wedding – fellow billionaire Donald Trump told CNN: “So he’s gonna be worth like $US18, $US19 billion, you’re telling me … he’s got a girlfriend … does he get a pre-nuptial agreement? They get married, and then for some reason over the next couple of years they get divorced and then she sues him for $US10billion and she hits the jackpot.”

There’s been no official announcement of a pre-nup – or lack of – but the Sydney Morning Herald suggests Zuckerberg will have saved himself billions (in the event of a divorce) by holding the wedding after Facebook’s floatation.

Under California law, divorcing spouses are entitled to half of all assets and income accrued during a marriage, but usually have no claim over wealth built up before the wedding.

If a pre-nup was agreed the law gives a seven-day cooling-off period between the drawing up and signing, meaning the exact details of the flotation could not have been included. Zuckerberg could have asked Chen to agree to limit a divorce payout to an amount or accept a percentage of his wealth at separation.

But the couple maintains they were just waiting until Chen graduated from medical school – which she did last Monday.  A spokesperson for the couple said: “The wedding had been planned for months and the couple was waiting for Chan to finish medical school, but the date of the IPO was a ‘moving target’ not known when the wedding was set.”

Pre-nups. Would you sign one? If you were Mark Zuckerberg, would you have asked your fiance to sign?