With the recent wedding of Jenna Bush Americans are taking another look at the children of their Presidents who have married while their father’s were in office. Of the now twenty three children of President’s who have married during their father’s term only nine of them have had weddings in the White House. The others, including the recent wedding of President Bush’s daughter, took place in other venues. Perhaps Jenna’s choice makes the most sense in this regard since although her father is the President she never really lived in the White House.
The first wedding to occur at the White House was the wedding of James Monroe’s daughter Maria Elizabeth Kortright Monroe in March of 1820. The fifth President’s seventeen year old daughter married one of her father’s junior secretaries. The wedding ceremony is believed to have taken place in what is currently called the Blue Room. After the ceremony was over the forty guests moved into the State Dining Room for the reception.
The next wedding, in February 1828, was of the only son of a President, John Adams ll, to be married in the White House. This couple had a very interesting history before they married. The young woman was taken in by President Adams and his wife only to set her sights on the first of the president’s sons to take an interest. She dated all three, becoming engaged to two of them, and finally married when the First Lady became concerned that she was trying to seduce her son. They had a wedding that mirrored the wedding of Maria Monroe, an event that young Mary Catherine Hellen had heard many stories about. Sadly, the older brother of the groom drank himself to death at her betrayal of him, dying in what many called an accidental drowning while just as many claim it was a suicide.
Elizabeth Tyler married in the White House in January 1842. Her wedding was the only time that her mother came down from her second floor room since suffering from a stroke two years previously. The First Lady died later that year but at least she was able to share her daughter’s most important day. The last of the White House weddings to take place in the 1800s was that of Nellie Grant, daughter of President Ulysses S. Grant, who married in May of 1874 to a man she met on a ship while returning from England. Nellie was the American sweetheart. Her trip to England had not only netted her a husband on the way back but she had been the first American teenager to be received by Queen Victoria and had numerous parties thrown for her during her time in England.
Nellie had been called the most attractive young women to live in the White House. The American people were captivated by her and the romantic story that lead up to her marriage. She wore a white satin gown, which was trimmed in Brussels point lace, It was said to be a very expensive gown that cost thousands of dollars; a huge amount for that time. There was a marine band there playing the wedding march as the president gave his only daughter away. So loved was this eighteen year old bride that one newspaper of the time put out an edition that had twelve pages of wedding pictures. She was so popular that they had to keep printing the paper nonstop to allow the unexpectedly huge number of readers to get a copy.
