From Deseret News archives:
Bush wedding part of a varied history
First family nuptials stretch back to Lucy Madison in 1812
On May 10, Jenna Bush will do it her way: privately in a casual ceremony on the family's Texas ranch, telling Vogue she'll wear beaded Oscar de la Renta.
Despite top secrecy since her engagement was announced in August, and mounting speculation over details, Bush's wedding with Henry Hager will blend into a lively and varied history of first family nuptials stretching back to Dolley Madison's sister Lucy in 1812.
Twenty-two presidential children have been married while their dads were in office, including nine at the White House. Grover Cleveland is the only president to be married at the residence, with Presidents John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson also taking brides while serving, but in ceremonies conducted elsewhere.
John Adams II, son of John Quincy Adams, beat out his two brothers in a "bachelor derby" for the hand of their flirty first cousin, a beauty named Mary Catherine Hellen, and was the only presidential son to marry at the Executive Mansion. The jilted sibs didn't attend.
Most weddings were the social events of their times, including the elaborate ceremony of Tricia Nixon to Edward Cox in 1971, the only White House wedding held in the Rose Garden and a big bump to her father's popularity as he smiled wide at her side and danced to "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."
"I was living at the White House with my parents. It felt very natural," Nixon Cox told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I just basically was like all brides. You love the person that you're going to be marrying and that is what makes the moment."
Her sleeveless silk organdy gown with hand-clipped lace defied her usual little-girl look. It was by Priscilla of Boston and a step ahead fashion-wise. Priscilla herself escorted the gown to Washington in its own first-class plane seat.
While the Nixon-Cox wedding was broadcast live on television and the bride treated to the covers of Time and Life magazines, Bush's wedding in tiny Crawford, Texas, is expected to be low key and away from prying media eyes.
"This is going to be such a different kind of situation from Tricia Nixon's wedding," said Katherine Jellison, an associate professor history at Ohio University who chronicles the American obsession with marital pomp in a new book, "It's Our Day."
"Jenna's father is not running for re-election," she said. "The frivolity of a big White House wedding in the middle of an unpopular war would have used up what little political capital he has."
