By Gao Yun
On Sunday, Feb. 1, a star-studded wedding was held at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. President Trump attended in person to celebrate the marriage of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and Erin Elmore, director of the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program. Upon arriving, Trump praised Scavino to the media as “a very loyal, very outstanding person.”
The wedding drew many heavyweight figures from the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) camp, including tech mogul Elon Musk, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Senator Marco Rubio, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, among others.
Several members of President Trump’s family were also in attendance, including his eldest son Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancée Bettina Anderson, his former wife Vanessa, his daughter Kai, as well as Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, and his youngest daughter Tiffany Trump with her husband Michael Boulos.
Elmore is a journalist, philanthropist, and Republican strategic advisor. She graduated from the University of Miami, majoring in communications (broadcasting) and political science, earning dual degrees with honors. She currently serves as director of the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program, which promotes cultural diplomacy by displaying American artworks in U.S. embassies around the world.
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On Feb. 1, 2026, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and venture capitalist Shivon Zilis arrived at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to attend the wedding of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and Erin Elmore, director of the State Department’s overseas Art in Embassies program.
This marked the second wedding hosted by Trump over the same weekend. The day before, podcast personality Alex Bruesewitz married former Miss Nevada USA Carolina Urrea at Trump National Doral Miami.
However, Trump was unable to attend Bruesewitz’s wedding due to his participation in the black-tie dinner of Washington’s elite Alfalfa Club. Instead, he sent a video message offering his congratulations, joking to the groom: “From everything I’ve heard, Alex, you’re very, very lucky.”
Turning back to Scavino’s wedding: now 50 years old, Scavino first crossed paths with Trump in the 1990s, when he worked as a caddie and bag-room assistant at Briar Hall Country Club. He later rose steadily within Trump’s inner circle, becoming a key architect of Trump’s social media strategy and helping shape his signature hard-hitting online style.
During Trump’s presidency, Scavino was appointed to lead the White House Presidential Personnel Office, overseeing roughly 4,000 political appointments, including 1,600 positions requiring Senate confirmation. In October last year, Trump again tapped him to replace Sergio Gor as director of the office.
According to the New York Post, Gor had clashed with some officials and drawn dissatisfaction from Senate staff. Trump later appointed him as U.S. ambassador to India.
Scavino proposed to Elmore on Sept. 25 last year outside the Oval Office at the White House and later announced the engagement on social media. He revealed on The Katie Miller Podcast that they chose to hold the wedding now because of the intense pace of government work and Trump’s imminent return to campaign mode to help Republicans retain control of the House.
“What else could we do—wait until October to get married?” he joked on the show. The wedding was originally intended to be kept low-key as a surprise for guests, but Scavino accidentally let the news slip on the podcast. The New York Post subsequently broke the story first. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything,” he laughed. “But I’m just too honest.”
