President Joe Biden’s eldest granddaughter Naomi Biden married her partner Peter Neal last Saturday at the White House, the first wedding to take place at the Washington landmark since 2013.
Naomi Biden, 28, and Neal, 25, both lawyers, were married on the South Lawn of the White House “in front of 250 family members and friends”, according to Vogue.
The ceremony was followed by an “intimate luncheon in the State Dining Room” before an “exclusive black-tie evening reception” attended by hundreds more guests, said The Washington Post. Shortly before he turned 80 on Sunday, “the president stayed late to mingle with the guests”, the paper said.
According to Newsweek, “the Biden family is taking care of the costs of the wedding”. The first lady’s communications director told The New York Times that it was “consistent with other private events hosted by the first family”, while the president’s press secretary said the event was “not White House business”.
The Biden marriage is not the first wedding to take place at the White House, and is in fact the 19th ceremony on the grounds. The last was in 2013 when President Barack Obama hosted a wedding for his photographer, Pete Souza. The last presidential family wedding to take place at the White House was back in the Clinton era, when Hillary Clinton’s youngest brother Anthony Rodham was married in the Rose Garden in 1994. President George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush did hold her reception at the White House, but the wedding was held at the family’s ranch in Texas.
Family members of presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt were all married at the White House, while Woodrow Wilson saw no fewer than three family members tie the knot there. The first White House wedding took place in 1812 when President James Madison’s sister-in-law was married, while Grover Cleveland is the only president to have married there, doing so in 1886.
Here are some of the most notable White House weddings in history.
Naomi Biden (November 2022)
President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden married her fiancé Peter Neal on the South Lawn. It was the first presidential family wedding ceremony to be held at the White House since 1994.
Tricia Nixon (June 1971)
President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia Nixon married corporate lawyer Edward F. Cox in June 1971 in the Rose Garden. According to Town and Country “four hundred guests attended”, including Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, now 87, who had been married there in 1906.
Lynda Bird Johnson (December 1967)
Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, married the then former Marine and White House social aide Charles Robb in a ceremony in the East Room in December 1967. Robb later became a senator for Virginia between 1989 and 2001.
The year before, President Johnson’s youngest daughter Luci held her reception at the White House, but the wedding ceremony took place in a church in Washington DC.
Eleanor Wilson (May 1914)
The youngest daughter of Woodrow Wilson was married in the Blue Room in 1914 to the then secretary of the treasury, William McAdoo. It was the second of three Wilson weddings at the White House, taking place four years before the president’s niece Alice Wilson was married in the same room.
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