“Here comes the bride:” The White House will host its 19th wedding

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Here Comes the Bride” will be played at the White House very soon. Again.

Naomi Bidengranddaughter of the president Joe Bidenand Peter Neal to be married in the South Meadow on Saturday next 19 wedding in White House history.

It will be the first wedding with a granddaughter of a president as a bride and the first at the venue, according to the White House Historical Association.

A mutual friend set up Naomi Biden, 28, and Neil, 25, about four years ago in New York, and the White House said they have been together ever since. Naomi Biden is a lawyer; her father is Hunter Biden. Neal is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The couple lives in Washington.

Nine of the 18 documented White House weddings have been to a president’s daughter — most recently to Richard Nixon’s daughter, Trisha, in 1971, and to Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter, Linda, in 1967.

But the first lady’s nieces, great-niece, son and siblings also got married. One president, Grover Cleveland, also got married there while in office.

The first lady Jill Biden said she’s thrilled to see her granddaughter “planning her wedding, making her choices, becoming, you know, just coming into her own, and she’s so beautiful.”

“So I can’t wait for you all to see her as a bride,” the first lady said during a recent appearance on Singer TV. Kelly Clarkson s talk show.

Stuart McLaurin, president of the historical association, said special occasions at the White House are not easily forgotten.

“When you have the privilege of celebrating a holiday or a special event in your life there, like a wedding, it’s a very memorable event,” he said.

Five weddings took place in the Eastern Hall, four in the Blue and two in the Rose Garden, a few steps from the Oval Hall.

In June 1971, some 400 guests watched as Nixon walked Trisha down the South Portico steps to an awaiting Edward Cox, and the couple exchanged vows in a gazebo set up in the Rose Garden for the first wedding ceremony ever held there.

Her planner—a black three-ring binder marked TRITIA’S WEDDING and kept at the historical association—has tabbed sections for every aspect of her special day, including attendants, social aides, gazebos, flowers, parking, seating, menus , champagne, press and more.

Her wedding cake was a six-tiered, 350-pound (159-kilogram), 6-foot (1.8-meter) lemon-flavored pound cake decorated with sugar lovebirds and the initials “PN” and “EC.”

The White House released the recipe, but home bakers and food critics said it made a “soupy mess” and suggested the White House went overboard on the amount of egg whites compared to whole eggs. White House History Quarterly wedding issue of the magazine.

President Nixon sent a letter of thanks to Rex Scouten, chief usher of the White House, for his help in coordinating the physical arrangements for the wedding. The letter is in Tricia Nixon’s planner.

“I want you to know how grateful all Nixons are for your wonderful contributions on this special day,” Nixon wrote.

In October 2013, the chief photographer of the White House of Barack Obama Pete Souza, and Patti Liz tied the knot in a private ceremony in the Rose Garden after 17 years together. Obama met Liz because she attended some White House events.

“He kept pestering me why we didn’t get married,” Souza told the Associated Press. He said Obama made what he thought was an inappropriate comment about the Rose Garden wedding, but later “I found out he wasn’t joking.”

He and Liz exchanged the words “I do” in front of about 30 family members and friends. They felt overwhelmed by the place, but the president’s gesture was honored, he said.

“It gives people the feeling that I had a unique relationship with Barack Obama, that he would insist that I have a White House wedding,” Souza said. “It is a great honor for me, as well as for my wife, to hold a wedding ceremony at the White House. Few people can say that.”

The Rose Garden helped unite the two Democratic political families when Anthony Rodham, brother of the then first lady Hillary Clinton, and Nicole Boxer, daughter of California then-Sen. Barbara Boxerexchanged wedding vows in May 1994 during a private ceremony.

Hillary Clinton first suggested hosting the wedding at Camp David, the president’s official retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, but later suggested the rose garden, Nicole Boxer said.

“I was so excited about the possibility of this,” Nicole Boxer recalled in a phone interview from California. “Can you imagine a more perfect place?”

Among the approximately 250 guests were President Biden and his wife, Jill. Biden and Barbara Boxer were serving in the Senate at the time.

The reception was held in the First Lady’s Garden, followed by lunch in the State Dining Room and dancing in the East Room. President Bill Clinton played the saxophone; daughter Chelsea was a bridesmaid.

“You just think you’re the luckiest person in the world, and I think that’s something you should appreciate,” Nicole Boxer said. “It’s like part of the American fabric.”

A White House wedding is no guarantee of a lasting marriage. The couple divorced in 2001. Rodham is dead in 2019.

Linda Johnson Robb said she never thought about getting married at the White House, but circumstances practically dictated that she and Marine Corps Capt. Charles Robb were married there in December 1967. A year before, her sister Lucy was married in the Roman Catholic Church in Washington.

“We had to get married earlier than I would have liked because he was going to go to Vietnam and so we wanted to get married for a while and it was only three months before he left,” said Linda Johnson Robb on White. House Historical Association Podcast in 2018.

The couple met because Rob was appointed to the White House in a capacity military social worker.

They were married in the East Room with White House bride Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who had married in the same room in 1906, among about 500 guests. After leaving the room, the pair walked under a saber arch created by Robb’s marines.

In keeping with military wedding tradition, they used Rob’s sword to make the first cut of their wedding cake, a 6ft (1.8m) 250lb (113.4kg) raisin cake, decorated with sugar scrolls, roses and love. birds

Linda Johnson Robb said she was lucky. Red is her signature color, and a December wedding meant the White House was already decorated for Christmas. Her mother, Lady Bird Johnson, was relieved of her stress.

“They could use the same decorations and it was great,” she said. “My mother was always trying to find ways to save money.”