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.