Mike Pence's Daughter Charlotte Marries at the Naval Academy 3 Days After Christmas
Two years after being introduced at a wedding, Vice President Mike Pence‘s daughter Charlotte Pence and her fiancé, Henry Bond, had a wedding of their own, PEOPLE confirms.
They married three days after Christmas at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, says a spokeswoman for Second Lady Karen Pence. The exact date had been kept quiet in advance because of security, USA Today reported last month.
Charlotte, 26, on Thursday morning posted the first photo from their wedding: a shot of her and Bond (a Naval Academy graduate) leaving the chapel beneath an arch of swords.
“Forever your hand in mind,” she wrote in the caption.
She was more playful in her Instagram Story, posting a photo on Wednesday of a “wifey” coffee mug with the text “can finally use this mug with a clean conscience phew.”
“Congratulations to Charlotte and Henry!” Mrs. Pence wrote on Twitter.
A source tells PEOPLE that Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump‘s daughter and senior aide, attended the wedding along with her husband, Jared Kushner, also a White House adviser. Both flew in from Florida where they were spending the holiday at the Trumps’ Mar-a-Lago resort, the source says, noting that Kushner and Vice President Pence have been close since the campaign.
Speaking with USA Today in December, Charlotte said she and Bond had similar world views and desires. They were introduced by her brother, Michael Pence, and his wife at Michael’s October 2017 wedding.
“He [Michael] started conspiring a little with his wife, talking about how Henry really reminded them of me,” Charlotte said in December. “Henry I just shared a lot of the same views about life and faith and I think they were excited to see if anything happened.”
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Thank you to all of our wedding guests for honoring our privacy with our no cell phone / picture policy. ♥️ We love you. More pics to come! 🤗
— Charlotte Pence Bond (@charlipence) January 9, 2020
“My parents are used to moving a lot and have taken a lot of risks in their life,” she told USA Today. “And I think that’s something Henry and I bonded over, that we both wanted to take risks.”
Bond, Charlotte said, wanted her for who she was and not for the spotlight on her family.
“Something that I really love about him is that he has really always been interested in me and not my last name, ever,” she told USA Today.
They were engaged in July.
“I said ‘yes,’ and then I said ‘thanks’ a lot because I didn’t know what else to say,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I love you. Let’s do this.” She and Bond set their wedding date before he was deployed, USA Today reported.
Charlotte said in December that the wedding reception was going to be held at the vice presidential residence — the first such celebration in decades, since Al Gore‘s daughter Karenna Gore was married, according to USA Today.
Her wedding dress, Charlotte said then, was “bigger than I thought I would want. It’s definitely not what I was expecting to get.” She was keeping it a secret from Bond, though, to preserve the surprise.
Charlotte, who has been studying for her master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School, is Vice President Pence’s middle daughter. Her older brother, a Marine Corps pilot, married in 2017. Younger sister Audrey Pence is also engaged.
In recent years, Charlotte has also pursued a media and speaking career. She’s written columns for the conservative Washington Times and has published three books, including 2018’s Where You Go: Life Lessons from My Father.
