Naomi Biden, the granddaughter of President Joe Biden, and Peter Neill are getting married on the South Lawn on Saturday, in what will be the 19th wedding in White House history. It will be the first wedding with a granddaughter of a president as a bride and the first at this location, 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. Neil recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania law school. The couple lives in Washington. Nine of the 18 documented White House marriages have been to a president’s daughter—most recently Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia in 1971 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter Linda in 1967. But nieces, a granddaughter, a son and the brothers of the first ladies have also married there. A president, Grover Cleveland, tied the knot there, too, while in office. First Lady Jill Biden said she’s excited to see her granddaughter “plan her wedding, make her choices, be, you know, just come into her own and she’s just so beautiful.” “So I can’t wait until you all see her as a bride,” the first lady said during a recent appearance on singer Kelly Clarkson’s talk show. Stewart McLaurin, president of the historical association, said special occasions at the White House are not soon forgotten. “If you were to have the privilege of celebrating a holiday or a special occasion in your life there, like a wedding, it’s a very memorable occasion,” he said. Five weddings took place in the East Room, four took place in the Blue Room and two in the Rose Garden, steps away from the Oval Office. In June 1971, about 400 guests watched as Nixon walked Tricia down the South Portico steps to a waiting Edward Cox, and the couple exchanged vows in a gazebo set up in the Rose Garden for the first-ever wedding ceremony there. The story continues Her planner — a black three-ring binder marked “TRICIA’S WEDDING” and held by the historical society — has tabbed every aspect of her special day, including the attendants, social workers, the gazebo, the flowers, the parking, seating, menu, champagne, press and more. Her wedding cake was a six-tiered, 350 lb (159 kg), 1.8 m tall, lemon-flavored cake decorated with puffed sugar lovebirds and the initials “PN” and “EC”. The White House released the recipe, but home bakers and food critics said it made a “soup mess” and speculated that the White House had mixed up the number of egg whites versus whole eggs, according to the White House magazine’s wedding issue History Quarterly. President Nixon sent a note of thanks to Rex Schouten, the White House chief of staff, for his help in coordinating the physical arrangements for the wedding. The letter is in Tricia Nixon’s designer. “I want you to know how grateful all Nixons are for your wonderful contribution on this very special day,” Nixon wrote. In October 2013, Barack Obama’s chief White House photographer, Pete Souza, and Patti Lease were married in a private Rose Garden ceremony after 17 years together. Obama had met Lez because he attended some White House events. “It kept bugging me because we weren’t married,” Souza told The Associated Press. He said Obama made what he thought was a misleading comment about the Rose Garden wedding, but later “I found out he wasn’t joking.” He and Lease exchanged “I do’s” in front of about 30 family members and friends. They felt overwhelmed by the venue but honored by the president’s gesture, he said. “It gives people the sense that I had a unique relationship with Barack Obama that he would insist that I have the wedding at the White House,” Souza said. “I am so honored, and so is my wife, to have my wedding ceremony at the White House. Not many people can say that.” The Rose Garden helped unite two Democratic political families when Anthony Rodham, brother of then-first lady Hillary Clinton, and Nicole Boxer, daughter of then-Senator Barbara Boxer of California, exchanged wedding vows in May 1994 during a private ceremony. Hillary Clinton had initially offered Camp David, the official presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, for the wedding, but later suggested the Rose Garden, Nicole Boxer said. “I was so excited about the prospect,” Nicole Boxer recalled during a phone interview from California. “Can you imagine a more perfect space?” Among the approximately 250 guests were President Biden and his wife, Jill. Both Biden and Barbara Boxer served in the Senate at the time. The reception was held in the First Lady’s Garden, followed by dinner in the State Dining Room and dancing in the East Room. President Bill Clinton played his saxophone. Her daughter Chelsea was a bridesmaid. “You just think you’re the luckiest person in the world and I think that’s something to appreciate,” Nicole Boxer said. “It’s like being part of the American fabric.” A White House wedding is no guarantee of a lasting marriage. The couple divorced in 2001. Rodham died in 2019. Linda Johnson Robb said she never considered a White House wedding, but circumstances practically dictated that she and Marine Capt. Charles Robb were married there in December 1967. The year before, her sister Lucy had a Roman Catholic wedding in Washington. “We had to get married sooner than I would have liked because he was going to Vietnam, and so we wanted to get married for a while and that was just three months before he left,” Linda Johnson Robb told a White. The House Historical Association podcast in 2018. The couple met because Rob was assigned to the White House as a military social worker. They were married in the East Room with White House bride Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who was married in the same room in 1906, among about 500 guests. The pair walked under an arch created by Robb’s marines as they left the room afterwards. Following tradition at military weddings, they used Rob’s sword to make the first cut of their wedding cake — a 6-foot-tall, 250-pound (113.4 kg) raisin cake decorated with sugar rolls, roses and love. birds. Lynda Johnson Robb said she was lucky. Red is her signature color, and December weddings meant the White House was already decked out for Christmas. Her mother, Lady Bird Johnson, was spared some stress. “They could use the same decorations and that was great,” she said. “My mother was always trying to find ways to save money.”
