In the vast concentric circles of Clintonian friendship, a new vocabulary defines coolness. The lingo doesn't pivot on name-dropping. But wedding-dropping. 

"I'll see you after The Wedding" spoken at stage-whisper levels  translates into "I'm so very, very tight with the fam. Wink, wink." Nary a mention of Bill or Hill or Chelsea necessary. Inclusion in the wedding confers an intimacy, an extra-special, next-generation "friend of the family" status that stands alongside FOB or Hillaryland bona fides -- a family triangle of triangulation. It's a kind of closeness that no private-jet sit-down, business collaboration or political grip-and-grin, no matter how exclusive, can achieve.

They're not A-listers, this "see you after the wedding" crowd, but something beyond. "That's the Triple-A list," says John Catsimatidis, a billionaire New York supermarket mogul whose chumminess with the Clintons, and knack for raising megabucks for their campaigns, did not, alas, merit an invitation. "They'll look at themselves as the lucky ones," Catsimatidis says.

The nuptials of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky are scheduled to take place Saturday in all their secretive, in-crowd glory at a secluded mansion protected by a no-fly zone and barricaded roads outside the village of Rhinebeck in the country-home paradise that is the mid-Hudson Valley. Managing the guest list, a scant 400 or 500 -- a big bash for life-size folks, a tiny gathering for the JumboTron-scaled Clintons -- presented a hyper-delicate challenge for Madam Secretary, Mr. Former President and their First Daughter, family intimates say.

The talking points that evolved seem to honor and elevate their only child, while providing cover for parents whose political and social lives intertwine, sometimes: The guests must have a personal connection to the bride or the groom. This is Chelsea's day, not her famous parents' day. 

"They respect her and what she thinks. . . . They want what she wants," says a family friend who is attending the wedding and agreed to speak for a few moments only after a series of cross-my-heart, hope-to-die, stick-a-needle-in-my-eye promises of anonymity. "They raised her to be her own person -- independent in thought."

In some cases, intermediaries communicated the message to the dearly snubbed, family friends say, and sometimes even the former president himself lodged an I-feel-your-pain call. Still, there are whispers of injured feelings among the elites in Washington and New York who were left out. Some feel compelled to feel bad on behalf of others. New York donor Victor Kovner, not going? How could that be?

D.C.'s top secret?

The allure juicing the celebration only intensifies because of the secrecy. (Another first daughter, Jenna Bush, had her own fabulous nuptials in 2008 when her dad was still commander in chief. Jenna took less of a wedding-as-state-secret approach, sharing dress details with Vogue editors.)

Divining the invitees to the Clinton soiree is a Washington parlor game of the most status-clarifying kind, an exercise in who's up, who's down and who's on the bubble. Wedding guests and non-guests alike shudder at the thought of the Clintons finding out any hint that they've been gabbing. The clampdown is a testament to the loyalty the Clintons inspire and the intensely genuine affection many feel for Chelsea, as well as an acknowledgement, for some, that banishment from the circle would be the assumed punishment.

"I'd have to kill myself after we talked, so I think I'll pass," one Washington pooh-bah and logical invitee says. A curious number of sources asked about the guest list simply respond "nope," as if working from a script. Even normally talkative types operate in a cone of silence, politely ducking interview requests through their assistants. "Thank you for thinking of Mandy for this piece," writes an assistant to Mandy Grunwald, a typically chatty Clinton spinmeister. "Unfortunately she won't be speaking on this topic."

The left-out group is more firmly established than the let-in group. President Obama, whose victory nixed the White House as a wedding venue, won't be going -- even said so on "The View" -- nor will former British prime minister Tony Blair, he of the Special Relationship with Bill Clinton, according to a spokesman. Al and Tipper Gore, now in the throes of a separation, issued a statement a while back that they won't be attending, without elucidating whether they were invited.

Among those widely expected to be "in" are Hillary Clinton's brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham; whether Bill's brother, Roger -- always entertaining -- will make the scene is a favorite topic. The smart money is on Tony Rodham's daughter, Fiona, as flower girl. There will surely be plenty of school and work friends of the bride and groom, and the whispering classes are feeling awfully confident that the guests will include Washington power broker Vernon Jordan and his wife, Ann, as well as Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a wealthy businesswoman and Clinton stalwart, and Elizabeth Bagley, a former ambassador to Portugal who navigates the upper tiers of Georgetown society.

Heavy speculation also centers on former White House chums, such as Melanne Verveer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for women's issues who was once Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, as well as on Capricia Marshall, the current White House chief of protocol who is said to have grown close to Chelsea while serving as her mother's social secretary. Another widely expected guest is Huma Abedin, the elegant aide who is Hillary's right arm; she married New York's feisty congressman Anthony Weiner in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton earlier this month. Abedin is considered so tight with the MOTB that one Clinton friend quipped that two of HRC's daughters are getting married this summer.

'A no-fanfare person'

Hillary Clinton's biological bride-to-be maintained her Garbo-esque reticence as her big day approached. "What she's trying to do is minimize the atmospherics that have been created around this -- all the stuff around the edges," a wedding guest says. "The irony is that Chelsea is such a no-fanfare person."

Chelsea -- now a stylishly flat-ironed and poised 30-year-old, not the gawky, curly haired teenager of our memories -- demands privacy, officially. Then again, she opts for a wedding extravaganza that commands spotlight attention, rather than following the au courant celebrity model of the tiny wedding in a private residence. To some, there is an element of "don't look at me, look at me" to the whole affair. She slips into a big floppy hat to conceal her identity, but heads through the front door to visit dressmaker Vera Wang -- an image predictably captured and splashed all over the Web.

"The wedding seems as conflicted as the Clintons can sometimes be," says Doug Wead, an aide to the first President Bush who has written extensively about first families. "She's a private, dignified woman; on the other hand, she's getting married two hours from New York City."

The shabby-chic rhythms of Rhinebeck resist the effects of hype. Still, it's impossible to avoid the wedding, especially when Bill Clinton is popping out of a vehicle in the middle of town, shaking hands and sitting down for lunch Friday afternoon at a place called Gigi Trattoria. Shop windows are festooned with happy-couple congrats -- an image of Chelsea and Marc on a wedding cake at Wing & Clover, an art shop a few steps from Rhinbeck's only stoplight; two doves kissing above a pencil drawing of Chelsea, and a streetside photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton at Pete's Famous Restaurant.

Before the former president's arrival packs the streets, the hordes of reporters occupy themselves with the ramblings of a couple promenading one evening in Bill and Hillary Clinton masks. "I was just on ABC and CBS, the Daily News and the New York Post, all in the past 20 minutes," Gary Kiernan says after slipping out of his Bill Clinton mask. In the lobby of the Beekman Arms, tourists interrupt tales of their canoe trip to observe a cameraman running past the window.

Not surprisingly, there's a fair amount of grumbling from villagers annoyed about the invasion of cars, the hubbub, the road closings -- there always are in these situations, regardless of the location. "I wanted to make a sign that said, 'Royalty, Go Home!' " says Michael Tucker, a filmmaker, from the back porch of his picturesque home on River Road, near the wedding location. "That's what it has been like -- royalty. . . . This is not the Hamptons!"

No one expects the full royal treatment, a Lady Di train or a Cinderella carriage, for these lavishly inconspicuous proceedings, but the rumors of price tags in the several millions and the daughter of George Soros hosting the former first family suggest a swankified affair. The invitations went out cryptically, revealing only that the festivities would take place outside New York on July 31. Guests were asked to select from several hotel price ranges, and a travel agent made the reservations, as well as transportation arrangements, one invitee explains. Just this week, guests began getting individual phone calls firming up the details. They will be bused to the wedding site, Astor Courts, a beaux-arts mansion hidden by thick stands of trees. The 13,000-foot spread, with striking views of the Hudson River, was designed by renowned architect Stanford White to resemble the Grand Trianon at Versailles, for John Jacob Astor IV, an industrialist who died in the sinking of the Titanic.

The vista, with the black-tie occasion expected sometime around sunset, is certain to be spectacular. But there will be much more than nature's magnificence on display. Once the guests arrive, they will know  most for the first time just who's really in and just who's really out. And, surely, they will remember.

RHINEBECK – Before Chelsea Clinton’s wedding was held at Astor Court in Rhinebeck, the palatial estate built in 1902-1904, was on the block for sale for $12 million.

Now, two weeks after the wedding of the century that drew public officials and notables to watch Chelsea wed Marc Mezvinsky, the facility, which was inspired by the Grand Trianon at Versailles, is back on the market for $13.5 million.

The realtor handling the property, Harry Hill III of Rhinebeck, did not return a phone call for comment. But, the H.H. Hill Realty Services, Inc. website lists Astor Court as: “Located on 50 secluded, pastoral acres, this classical pavilion-style home offers panoramic views of the Catskill Mountains and 2000 feet of river frontage – and, it has a Letter of Patent from New York State guaranteeing access to the Hudson River in perpetuity.”

According to the website, the structure, also known as Astor Casino or Ferncliff Casino, was originally built as a sporting pavilion with indoor tennis court, swimming pool, squash courts on the main level and a bowling alley on the lower level.

In 1941, the building was converted to a residence.

“The current owners have completed a scrupulous renovation of the structure back to its original plans,” according to the website. The owners were not identified.

Who would you bet is more likely to graduate from college? The yet-to-be born children of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky or Tripp Palin, the child already born to Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, who became pregnant at 17? Therein lies the secret of America's declining educational performance.

The United States, which once led the world, has fallen to twelfth in the percentage of its citizens that graduate from college, according to a column by Bob Herbert in last Friday's New York Times.

The time has come to admit the truth every parent knows -- childrearing today is harder and more expensive than it was in the era in which America rose to prominence. Higher education became less affordable even before the Great Recession forced the states to slash education budgets, and the loss of close knit communities means that parental supervision has become more important in keeping children out of trouble. In our book Red Families v. Blue Families, we explain that "blue families" have responded to this reality by investing more in each child, and encouraging them to wait to have children until they, too, can bring the emotional and financial resources of independent adults to the task. Chelsea and Marc represent the new ideal, and there is every reason to believe that they will have considerable resources to bring to childrearing. Bristol and Levi, in contrast, represent the outcome of a system that preaches abstinence without the foundation of adult supervision, a promising future, or draconian consequences that once made it work. They bring Tripp into a world that simultaneously says having the child and keeping it is an acceptable choice, but you are on your own in dealing with an environment that provides little support for childrearing.

In another era, marriage would have been the answer. Levi would need to get a job, but jobs were plentiful. Today, the lack a high school diploma keeps him out of the electrician's apprentice program in which he tried to enroll, and the alternatives (outside of cashing in the notoriety that comes from his connection to the Palin family) are bleak. In the meantime, he is likely to father (if he hasn't done so already) other children to whom he contributes little support.

In another era, Bristol may have found married life confining, but the stakes for her have become much higher. Teens who marry young face bleaker financial circumstances, and they have always faced high risks of divorce. Over the last twenty years, the overall divorce rate has leveled off, but the chances that young couples like Bristol and Levi will remain married have worsened appreciably and more women, like Bristol, decide that the prospective groom simply doesn't offer enough to make marriage worthwhile.

For Bristol, marriage itself has risks that extend far beyond the discovery that Levi is a cad. If marriage were to make it more likely that she has a second child soon after the first or that she relies on her husband's earnings rather than her own, both her marital happiness and her prospects for life without Levi decline. Two career couples and stay-at-home moms with successful husbands are both doing well; financially stretched couples where the mother has to work because of the father's failure to earn enough to support the family are not -- and working class men now earn less in real dollar terms that they did a generation ago. Many parents, apparently like the Palins, experience relief when their daughters fail to marry the fathers of their children.

All of this magnifies the uncertainties for Tripp's future. The stimulation a child receives during the first three years, and parental ability to provide that interaction, increases with the parents' education and the support the caretaking parent has from others. Single mothers are stretched thin. As the child grows, the child needs medical care, parents who can supervise homework and afterschool activities, love and supervision. College graduates are more likely to be employed in workplaces that offer health insurance, flexible hours, and parental leave, and they are more likely to live in neighborhoods that still have effective public school.

As high school students start to plan for college, those who are most optimistic about their futures are also more likely to remain abstinent (and to use contraception if they don't). And with more students unable to afford the traditional college experience, the odds of keeping less hopeful students on track become more difficult.

While we emphasize that blue states do better than red states in delaying marriage and investing in children, the differences are ones of degree. Sarah Palin is a hero to her constituency because she and Bristol both had inconvenient children rather than resort to abortion. Her supporters realize that the conservative elite more commonly follows the blue prescription -- invest heavily in the children you have and protect them from the youthful temptations that threaten the futures of the next generation. The Tea Partiers just do not believe that their tax dollars should be used to help the children of others; indeed, the Republicans in Congress are blocking efforts to provide emergency funding to prevent teacher lay-offs. The modern economy and the triumph of conservative economics magnify inequality and make the stakes of childbearing that much higher. Hillary -- not Sarah -- is the Mama Grizzly in this story.

It looks like Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky have headed into the bush — they are celebrating their honeymoon on a South African safari! WWD reports, “sources say the newlyweds have headed into the wild — South Africa.” We guessed right!

President Clinton declined to comment on these speculations Monday, having said little since the wedding except to note his daughter’s nuptials were “wonderful.”

The paper goes on to point out the benefits of a safari for Chelsea and Marc, “First, few would recognize them in South Africa. And second, what paparazzi is going to risk being attacked by a lion or rhino just to get a photo of the couple?”

In our opinion, there may be more than a few paparazzi heading their now willing to take that risk for just one shot!

Amid glittering guests and watchful Secret Service men, Luc’s head chef Jason Hicks was hard at work two weekends ago, making risotto for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding celebration.

“I guess altogether we probably had about four chefs and 20 to 25 cooks,” said Mr. Hicks, a young Englishman who has worked at Luc’s Cafe on Big Shop Lane for about year.

“I was the risotto course, which was a trio of risottos,” he said.

“One plate with three indentations with an ounce of risotto in each: One was morel mushrooms and summer truffle; the other one was Meyer lemon; and the other saffron.”

Mr. Hicks worked in the New York City restaurant scene before coming to Luc’s. He got involved in the Clinton wedding through one of his former kitchen colleagues.

“The chef at the catering company was my former sous chef at La Goulue in the city,” Mr. Hicks said.

“And he’s now the chef of the catering company that did the wedding and he wanted some people like me there,” he said.

“He needed some eyes and ears and experience and so on to cover different areas.”

Chelsea Clinton married Marc Mezvinsky on Saturday, July 31, at Astor Courts, a 50-acre estate in Rhinebeck, N.Y., with a beaux arts mansion designed by Stanford White and built for John Jacob Astor IV in 1904.

The meal was planned for 550 guests, Mr. Hicks said.

“I think the final count was 527, 528,” he said. “We were working on 550.”

The crew of close to 30 chefs and cooks started days ahead and worked off-site and on-site to cater the event.

“It was being prepped the whole week, stuff that could be prepared ahead of time,” Mr. Hicks said. “Friday we did a big prep day and Saturday we started at 7 in the morning at the commissary, the kitchen. We loaded the trucks, transported the food, and got back to the commissary at 5:45 the next day — it was a pretty long day, a 23-and-a-half hour stint.

“There was a lot of staff, about 600-plus waiters, plus Secret Service and everything else,” Mr. Hicks said.

With the bride the only daughter of former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, this was a wedding with a lot of precautions.

“The security was incredible,” Mr. Hicks said. “It was something to believe. You can imagine.

“We had to pass CIA checks for our ID — that was a couple of weeks before the wedding. Once we got to the venue, we had pass security to get our IDs, and we had to show our IDs,” he said.

“Then they bus you from that site, which is off the premises, they bus you in to the property. From there they check bags and so on.

“There was a lot of Secret Service there and, periodically, through the event, they did security checks — looking for bombs, or whatever.”

Mr. Hicks was born in Stratford on Avon, and brought up in Birmingham in the English midlands.

He’s been in United States about 16 years.

“Always been in the city, though, in Manhattan,” he said. “I’ve just been coming out here for the last year.”

He said Chelsea’s wedding seemed to come off fine — as far as you could tell from the kitchen, anyway — and it was a positive experience to work on the big event.

“It all went very well. There’s nothing that left a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing,” he said.

“It was the wedding of Chelsea Clinton. But, the end of the day, my background is doing that kind of thing in a restaurant environment: For me, it’s wasn’t a ‘wow’ kind of deal,” Mr. Hicks said.

“It was fun,” he said. “It was as fun as a 23-and-a-half hour day could be.”

The ink has barely dried on Chelsea Clinton's marriage license, but already her lavish wedding is being used as a marketing tool to attract some of world's wealthiest consumers.

Astor Court Estate, the tony Rhinebeck, N.Y. manor where Clinton wed investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, is back on the market with a splashy new ad this weekend in the "House and Home" section of the "Financial Times," a British newspaper that caters to some of the planet's most sophisticated money men.

The ad, which occupies page 6, is headlined "Historic Estate Now on the Market -- Home of Recent Celebrity Wedding," a claim the house couldn't have made just 10 days ago.

Celebs notwithstanding, the sale itself is hardly breaking news: Astor Court was listed for a cool $12 million last October. It was only in early July that owner Katherine Hammer took the house off the market so that security and staff could prepare for the Clinton wedding.

The 30,000 square foot mansion is situated on 50 manicured acres overlooking the Hudson River. The laundry list of amenities includes an indoor pool, indoor tennis court, and 3,000 square feet of "staff quarters."

Little surprise, then, that on July 31 the house easily accommodated more than 400 guests hosted by the bride's parents, President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In addition to party goers, a small army of caterers, florists, valets, and groundskeepers was brought in for the day.

It's safe to assume real estate agents will be dropping the wedding's celebrity names for the foreseeable future, including Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey, and director Steven Spielberg.

The only thing more apparent than the charm in Rhinebeck, a town tucked away about 100 miles north of New York City, is the chatter.

People on the outside may be skeptical, but Rhinebeck residents are preparing for a royal wedding. They are convinced this quaint town of 4,600 will host Chelsea Clinton's nuptials.

Jim Langan, the editor of the Hudson Valley News, said he had no doubt that it is happening in Rhinebeck.

"Anyone who says it isn't happening here is dead wrong," he said. The former first daughter and her fiancé, Marc Mezvinsky, are expected to tie the knot July 31. 

"This is a small town and we have more moles here than a vegetable garden," Langan said. According to his sources, Clinton and Mezvinsky will say their "I dos" at the 50-acre Astor Courts on the Hudson River.

The guest list allegedly includes President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Barbara Streisand.

Speculation is that the rehearsal dinner will take place at a stone barn near town called Grasmere.

While ABC News shot video of it, the crew was escorted off the property by police and then told their information would be given to the Secret Service.

 

Though the wedding is long over, nitpickers are dissecting every choice of the new Mrs. Mezvinsky's wedding. On the chopping block today? The food. Chelsea Clinton is a vegetarian, and it was already reported that she had a gluten-free wedding cake. But she also made the decision to serve meat at the reception dinner. And now, the argument over what kind of food to serve at weddings is shaking the internet to its core.

Two weeks ago, Serious Eats posed the question of whether or not you would impose your own dietary preferences on your wedding guests. Responses were pretty split. Some said guests should expect to eat what the bride and groom want. "It's their wedding," said AnnieNT. "The happy couple gets to do whatever they want. Seriously, did you think this wedding was about the guests???" But greenteacups said, "I am a vegetarian and so is my husband but at our very-small wedding, we had a menu for vegetarians and a menu for meat eaters...I thought, why not, let everyone enjoy themselves because that's what I want when I get married." And now the Times is on the scene.

One vegetarian couple told them, “If you go to an Indian wedding, you don’t expect Italian food. So why should this be any different?” But vegan pastry chef Fernanda Capobianco disagreed, saying the reception is about everyone's tastes. "We are inviting chefs like Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud," she said. “How can we invite chefs and then have no meat? They’ll think we’re crazy."

The Times also looks at Chelsea's wedding style choices, which are apparently gamechangers. Her "pristine, minimalist and unembellished" wedding is now all the rage with brides-to-be. Wedding planner JoAnn Gregoli said, "It was sleek and clean, and I've had clients tell me, 'I don't want anything on my aisle, like Chelsea Clinton.' Brides are looking at that and seeing that less is more." And what is more romantic than a wedding based on the fleeting trends of the time?

By Roger Friedman

Here’s some last little tidbits from Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Remember? It was a week ago, and it took up everyone’s attention. Now, hey…it’s been a week!

Apparently, Bill Clinton was very moved after seeing Chelsea and Marc do a dirty dance to “At Last,” choreographed by Maksim Cherchmerkovskiy from “Dancing with the Stars.” He said:”I just talked to the priest and he told me as long they were married before did that sexy dance it was still a PG wedding.” The father of the bride also added, according to a wedding guest: “As long as Chelsea could articulate a thought–which was about when she was 8 years old–I’ve been outnumbered two-to-one. Now it’s two-to-two and I’m so grateful to you, Marc.”

A little more on the groom’s father, Edward Mezvinsky. As I told you, he didn’t walk his son down the aisle. “He is shunned by the family,” says a source. The ex-con congressman got to sit at the main table–a long dais–but at the far end, away from the happy couple and his ex wife.

And Chelsea’s matron of honor was Nicole Davison Fox, her former roommate, married to a hedge fund guy.

Leo Marks's poem "The Life That I Have," read as part of Chelsea Clinton and Mark Mezvinsky wedding ceremony, seems on the surface to be the perfect wedding poem. It's straightforward and employs simple language--easy for the guests to understand and appreciate with one listen--and it comes across as genuinely emotional with its incantatory and almost pleading repetition of "yours and yours and yours." Here's the full text of the poem:

The emotion behind the poem, it turns out, was genuine and intense. Marks wrote it on Christmas Eve in 1943 for his girlfriend Ruth, who had just died in a plane crash. In his 1998 memoir "Between Silk and Cyanide," Marks wrote of the poem's purpose, "I transmitted a message to her which I'd failed to deliver when I'd had the chance."

That's heartbreaking enough, but there was more tragedy to come. When Marks wrote the poem, he was serving as chief code breaker/cryptographer for Winston Churchill's famed Special Operations Executive, the group tasked with encoding allied messages and cracking German codes. A mathematical genius, Marks reportedly cracked Charles de Gaulle's personal cipher during a spare moment on the toilet.

When Marks joined the Special Operations Executive, it was common practice to use well-known poems as the ciphers for encoding messages. Marks found this appalling, as any Nazi with a book of British classics could crack the ciphers, so he took to using his original poems instead.

"The Life That I Have," Richard Hyfler noted in an article for Forbes Magazine, turned out to be an ideal poem to use as a cipher, with its "absence of the high-value Scrabble letters like 'z' and 'x' or words with double letters that make code easier to decipher." Marks eventually gave it to a beautiful, young agent with the French resistance named Violette Szabo to use as her personal code. Before the end of the war, Szabo was compromised then tortured and killed by the Nazis. Her travails, along with the poem, are remembered in a 1958 film called Carve Her Name With Pride. You can watch a scene from the movie below.

There's something beautiful and uplifting in seeing Marks' poem freed from its tragic context and put to its original use as a statement of love and devotion in such a public forum (Clinton and Mezvinsky were apparently unaware of the poem's history when they selected it). But perhaps now, we should remember the pain and the sacrifice tied to it.

The best and worst part of Chelsea Clinton's wedding to Marc Mezvinsky last weekend were one and the same.

The family managed to keep it a private affair with almost no high-powered celebrities or politicians, which cannot have been easy when the bride's dad is a former president and her mom the current secretary of state.

Of course, it helped to have the Secret Service on duty. But despite all the wild predictions about glitzy guests, there wasn't an Oprah Winfrey or a George Clooney in sight. The vast majority of the 400 invitees were friends and relations of the bride and groom.

I read somewhere that guests were prohibited from bringing cameras and cell phones to prevent unauthorized images and postings.

Good for them. The Clintons kept a joyous family occasion from becoming a media circus. Which didn't stop the media from trying to make it one, camped out around Rhinebeck, N.Y., and delivering nonstop speculation with almost no actual facts. Depending on the outlet, the wedding was said to have cost $1 million, $3 million, $6 million ... the longer reporters went without news, the higher the imaginary price tag climbed.

Yet this very sense of privacy and proportion (relatively speaking) that I admire was keeping me from indulging one of my guilty pleasures: I wanted more pictures, of everything, and I actually felt as if I deserved them. Not proud of it, but there it is.

Having watched Chelsea grow up from an awkward tween to a lovely, graceful and assured woman, I felt a sense of ownership that is wholly inappropriate. And in a country where political families are as close as we come to royalty, I'm not the only one.

I don't know these people, but I feel as if I do. I have witnessed many of their highest and lowest moments over the years -- Mr. Clinton's election and impeachment, Mrs. Clinton's presidential run and "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" concession speech, and that iconic image of Chelsea literally holding her parents together as they traversed the White House lawn during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Well, they are still together. For all the broken promises and self-inflicted wounds, the vicious attacks by political foes and merciless coverage, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton's marriage has endured. Maybe frequent trips to different time zones help, but there's no denying their longevity has defied the odds.

So it made me happy to see them all so happy, celebrating a wonderful moment for the daughter who is arguably their greatest accomplishment. Even their harshest critics had to concede that the Clintons did a great job with Chelsea, and now they had the pure joy of seeing her marry the childhood friend she grew to love, in a ceremony acknowledging both their religious traditions, hers Methodist, his Jewish.

Having suffered through the bad times, I wanted more and better pictures of the good ones. I wanted to see both of the Vera Wang gowns, the one Chelsea wore for the ceremony and the slinky one she changed into for the reception. And the Oscar de la Renta dress worn by the mother-of-the bride. And the bridesmaids and ushers in their finery.

I wanted a close-up of the ketuba (the marriage contract written in Hebrew, which is the large artwork on the easel in the official wedding shots) and a longer shot of the chuppah, or marriage canopy, in this case a woven bower of branches and flowers. I wanted to see the groom stomping on a wine glass, and the principals lifted on chairs and danced around the room at the reception. I wanted to see the table settings, the flowers and the gluten-free cake -- in short, the whole enchilada.

I don't normally feel this way about famous people's weddings and wasn't much interested when the children of Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Al Gore or George W. Bush got married. But then, I didn't watch any of them grow up in the midst of Shakespearean plot lines. Yet I felt a similar need for pictures in 1996, when John F. Kennedy Jr. married Carolyn Bessette in a much smaller and far more secretive affair. It was a function of having witnessed his family tragedies over the years, and his journey from the little boy saluting his fallen father's coffin to the grown man holding the hand of his bride.

Speaking of grooms, one might have thought Marc Mezvinsky was an orphan and only child for all the mention of his family in most reports when, in fact, he has two living parents and 10 siblings, several of them adopted. Not a single picture of them was among the official portfolio released to the press -- not even the brothers in the wedding party.

I'm guessing that's how the Mezvinskys wanted it. Marc's parents, Ed Mezvinsky and Marjorie Margolis-Mezvinsky, are both former members of Congress. His father served five years in prison for financial fraud, and his parents divorced shortly after the crimes came to light. Apparently, Mr. Mezvinsky was something of a mini-Bernie Madoff, bilking family and friends of millions of dollars, and is persona non grata among most of the relatives. But he was still invited to the wedding, where he reportedly stayed in the shadows while the groom's mother accompanied him down the aisle. That's another picture I wanted to see, mother and son together.

Maybe more photos will be coming out -- as I write this, People magazine is touting some exclusive shots that I haven't had a chance to check. Not that I'm rushing the newlyweds, and not that it will be any of my business, but I'm looking forward to their first-born.

Exclusively caught up with Bill Clinton backstage at the First Annual World Leadership Awards -- hosted by our own Kevin Frazier -- in Atlanta on Friday night, and in a rare public comment on the subject of his daughter Chelsea's wedding, the former president told ET the nuptials were "wonderful."

Clinton was honored with the Service Legacy Award at the awards ceremony, which was thrown by music star Usher's New Look Foundation, a non-profit organization that strives to motivate and mobilize youth around the country to become corporate and community leaders.

Also on Friday, Clinton broke ground on a new, communal hurricane shelter in Haiti following his Clinton Foundation's $1 million pledge to improve hurricane safety. The nation's 42nd president also announced that, inspired by the Clinton Foundation's commitment, the American Red Cross is investing $1 million to develop additional emergency shelters, and will invest $4 million more as other shelter sites are identified.

One week ago, Clinton walked his daughter Chelsea down the aisle when she married longtime beau Marc Mezvinsky at the lavish Astor Courts estate in Rhinebeck, New York.

Steve Spielberg allegedly chose to skip Chelsea Clinton's wedding day to care for piglets in the English countryside.

The Jurassic Park director was originally reported to be one of the celebrity guests at the former first-daughter's recent nuptials, but it has since been discovered that the 63-year-old actually spent the day at a farm in the Dartmoor village of Widecombe-in-the-Moore.

Philipa Hughes, the owner of Holwell Farm, told the Daily Express that Spielberg had been scouting the site for use in his next project, a big budget adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel War Horse.

"It has been chaotic but very memorable," she said. "He came here last Saturday for a recce of the area. It was Bill Clinton's daughter's wedding and much of the world's media thought he was there.

"We showed him around the farm, showed him the views and he met the animals, like our piglets and Dartmoor ponies. He was very friendly and unassuming. He loved the animals and we found him a very easy person to be around."

The cast for Spielberg's War Horse, which includes Cemetery Junction star Emily Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch ofBBC drama series Sherlock, was revealed back in June.