Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
White House gets set for 19th wedding
President’s granddaughter, 28, will be walking down the aisle on Saturday
WASHINGTON — Naomi Biden, the granddaughter of President Joe Biden, and Peter Neal are getting married Saturday in the first wedding with a president’s granddaughter as the bride, and the first one on the South Lawn of the White House, according to the White House Historical Association.
A mutual friend set up Naomi Biden, 28, and Neal, 25, about four years ago in New York City and the White House said they have been together ever since. Naomi Biden is a lawyer; her father is Hunter Biden. Neal recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania law school. The couple lives in Washington.
Nine of the 18 documented White House weddings were for a president’s daughter — most recently Richard Nixon’s daughter, Tricia, in 1971, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter, Lynda, in 1967.
But nieces, a grandniece, a son and first ladies’ siblings have also gotten married there. One president, Grover Cleveland, tied the knot there, too, while in office.
First lady Jill Biden said she’s excited to see her granddaughter “planning her wedding, making her choices, becoming, you know, just coming into her own, and she’s just so beautiful.”
“So I can’t wait ’til all of you 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 aren’t soon forgotten.
“If you were to have the privilege of celebrating a holiday there or a special occasion in your life, like a wedding, it is a very memorable occasion,” he said.
Five weddings were held in the East Room, four took place in the Blue Room and two unfolded in the Rose Garden, steps away from the Oval Office.
In June 1971, some 400 guests watched as Nixon walked Tricia down the steps of the South Portico to a waiting 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 labeled “TRICIA’S WEDDING” and kept by the historical association — has tabbed sections for every aspect of her special day, including the attendants, social aides, gazebo, flowers, parking, seating, menu, champagne, the press and more.
Her wedding cake was a six-tiered, 350-pound, 6-foottall lemon-flavored pound cake decorated with blown sugar love birds and the initials “PN” and “EC.”
The White House released the recipe, but home bakers and food critics said it produced a “soupy mess” and speculated that the White House had scrambled the number of egg whites versus whole eggs, according to White House History Quarterly magazine’s weddings issue.
President Nixon sent a thank-you note to Rex Scouten, the White House chief usher, for his help coordinating physical arrangements for the wedding. The letter is in Tricia Nixon’s planner.
“I want you to know how grateful all the Nixons are for your splendid contributions on this very special day,” Nixon wrote.
In October 2013, Barack Obama’s chief White House photographer, Pete Souza, and Patti Lease married in a private ceremony in the Rose Garden after 17 years of being a couple. Obama had gotten to know Lease because she attended some White House events.
“He kept pestering me about why we hadn’t gotten married,” Souza told The Associated Press. He said Obama made what he thought was an offhand comment about having the wedding in the Rose Garden, but later “I found out that he was not joking.”
He and Lease exchanged “I do’s” in the presence of about 30 family members and friends. They felt overwhelmed by the venue, but were honored by the president’s gesture, he said.
“It gives people a sense that I had a unique relationship with Barack Obama that he would insist I have the wedding at the White House,” Souza said. “I’m so honored, as is my wife, to have my wedding ceremony at the White House. Not many people can say that.”