Chris Hughes & Sean Eldridge Marry

After a year-and-a-half engagement, Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge married in a civil ceremony on Saturday, June 30 before 75 guests at their 8o-acre estate in Garrison, NY. William J. Corbett, a retired village justice, was the officiant. The subsequent reception at Cipriani, an ultra- posh Manhattan restaurant, included 400 guests, among them House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), actor Kal Penn, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), TV host Gayle King, Huffington Post publisher Arianna Huffington, Facebook’s first president (and Napster founder) Sean Parker and freshly-married Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Guests were entertained by a big band jazz orchestra before a blue and white multi-tiered cake topped by two grooms, one blond and one brunette.

Just like Zuckerberg, the couple announced their marriage with a Facebook Life Event update along with a set of photographs. The moment must have been particularly sweet for Eldridge, who until a year ago was political director of the same-sex marriage advocacy group Freedom to Marry.

Mr. Hughes (holding leash, above), 28, works from New York City, Garrison NY and Washington DC as the publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic magazine (est. 1914), which he purchased last November. TNR is a highly-regarded Washington DC-based politics and arts magazine with a liberal bent. Hughes graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a degree in history and literature before taking a job in California with Facebook, which he had co-founded with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin. Hughes’ stake in the value of Facebook is today estimated to be $650-750 million. Mr. Hughes also led the online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Eldridge, 25, is the founder and treasurer of Protect Our Democracy, an advocacy group based in Garrison that seeks campaign finance reform. He is also the president of Hudson River Ventures, an investment firm. Eldridge graduated from Brown University.

Note: On the same weekend that Hughes and Eldridge married, Facebook rolled out two new timeline icons that show two little grooms (above) and two little brides, to better represent the reality of gay marriage. Previously, all Facebook marriage announcements were represented by a little cake topper icon that depicted a bride and groom. Wedding photos by Mel Barlow, posted on the Facebook page of Mr. Hughes, naturally.

The couple met in November 2005 through a college acquaintance of Mr. Eldridge’s at a brunch in Harvard Square in Cambridge MA. Mr. Eldridge was working as a customer service manager for a moving company in Somerville MA, and Mr. Hughes was a senior at Harvard. At the time Hughes was already a founder of Facebook.

“He was very intelligent and charismatic,” Chris said of Sean. “He was very kind and politically engaged, and he cared about the world around us. All of that was very attractive to me.”

Eldridge was equally attracted. A week later, he asked Chris out on a date.

“I think we shared a lot of important, common interests,” Eldridge said. “We have a love of philosophy, politics and literature. He was one of the most intelligent and ambitious people I had ever met.”

Their first date was at Temple Bar in Cambridge. Sean said that he and Chris “had a great time. It all happened very fast.”

In this YouTube clip filmed two weeks after he became engaged to Hughes, Sean Eldridge delivers a short speech about the urgency of working for the right of same sex couples to marry. Inspiring.

Power Couple Chris Hughes & Sean Eldridge

Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes (right) and partner Sean Eldridge (left), political director for Freedom to Marry, announced their engagement a year ago. Hughes had proposed in the traditional way – down on one knee with a ring in a box – while the couple were celebrating New Years in Thailand. Four months later they were on the cover of The Advocate, headlining the annual list of forty LGBT leaders/newsmakers under the age of 40 (in their case, way under 40).

At age 19 Hughes was at Harvard on a scholarship when he and three friends founded Facebook. The 2010 movie The Social Network recounted that tale (Chris Hughes was played by actor Patrick Mapel). In 2006 Chris graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, then lived for a year in California. In 2007 he left for Chicago, where he oversaw the social media efforts of presidential candidate Barack Obama, who was then a long shot. The media subsequently put Hughes on a pedestal, honoring him with headlines such as “The kid who made Obama president.” Having made his fortune off Facebook (at least $500 million), he launched Jumo.com, a social networking hub aimed at connecting donors and volunteers to non-profit organizations.

Hughs met Sean Eldridge on a blind date in November 2005, when Eldridge was still a social network virgin. “I literally joined Facebook the day I met Chris,” Sean relates. Eldridge, three years younger than Hughes, also went on to campaign for Obama, as part of the team that put together Students for Obama. Heady from their political success, in 2008 they dined as a couple at the White House, as guests of Obama at his first state dinner. By 2009 Eldridge was a law school student at Columbia University, but dropped out in order to fight full time for the right to marry. Eldridge became communications director for the national group Freedom to Marry in early 2010 and was soon promoted to political director.

Since the couple make their in-town home in NYC’s Soho district, this cause was especially close to their hearts. Then, on July 24, 2011, New York State passed legislation giving gay couples the right to marry. Nevertheless, they decided to stick to their wedding date this coming June. They have planned a rehearsal dinner at Per Se, an intimate wedding at the couple’s home in Garrison, NY, and a reception that evening at Cipriani Wall Street, all orchestrated by Bryan Rafanelli, who planned Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.

With a victory in Washington State still just hours old, there are currently only seven states plus the District of Columbia where gay marriages have legal recognition – Massachusetts, Iowa, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Washington and DC. California allowed gays to marry for six months in 2008, until the Proposition 8 initiative reversed the legislation. A week ago the Ninth Circuit Court of California ruled 2 to 1 that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, so stay tuned. If there is a momentum gathering for same sex marriage, Eldridge deserves a large amount of credit. Hughes is a major donor to Freedom to Marry and serves as an advisor. “As a gay man, I want the freedom to marry Sean so we can build a family and a life together over the long term,” Hughes says. “I think marriage is a basic fundamental freedom that every American should have.”

We all owe a huge debt to these two men. With the advantage of wealth, the force of passionate conviction and wisdom beyond their years, Hughes and Eldridge are destined to become major forces in progressive politics.