Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wed longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan on Saturday, announcing the nuptials through a status update on the social networking site.

The 28-year-old billionaire's wedding took place a day after Facebook's initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday.

More than 280,000 people "liked" Zuckerberg's status change, which was accompanied by a photo of the smiling couple in wedding attire in a small, verdant outdoor setting with a string of lights behind them.

The pair wed in an intimate backyard ceremony in Palo Alto, California, according to People magazine. The couple had planned the exchange of vows for four months, but surprised their guests, who thought they were to celebrate Chan's recent graduation from medical school, the magazine reported.

Zuckerberg, whose shares are worth nearly $20 billion and who retains voting control of Facebook, marked the debut of his company's stock at Facebook's Silicon Valley campus on Friday, symbolically ringing the opening bell for stock trading.

Neither Zuckerberg nor Chan commented further about their marriage on their Facebook pages, and Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment on the wedding.  - Reuters