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.

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.

No details of the wedding itself have leaked, yet, nor have we seen the bride. But we have seen the father of the bride, twice, and the mother of the bride once. They gave a two-second wave to the cameras last night as they alighted from their van for an after-dinner party at the stately Beekman Arms, where many of the wedding guests are staying.

Former President Clinton, wearing a suit jacket and gray pants, had definitely lost weight, per Chelsea’s instructions. By cutting out junk food and exercising more, we were told, he actually lost more than 20 pounds, going five pounds further than his daughter had ordered.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wore a flowing, floor-length green print dress, her hair was brightly blond and she was grinning broadly.

Mr. Clinton made his first foray into town earlier Friday, having lunch at Gigi Trattoria, a local eatery, where he skipped dessert. Curiosity and celeb fever had built to such a fever pitch here, where hundreds of news media and pseudo-media have been encamped for a week, that Laura Pensiero, who owns Gigi Trattoria, said Mr. Clinton may have made the appearance simply “to let some steam out of the kettle.”

We don’t expect to see the Clintons today, but the crowd is already gathering at the main intersection here in this subdued, old-money town along the Hudson about two hours north of New York City. Tonight, the sky is expected to be set aglow by fireworks after Chelsea and Marc Mezvinsky, who works for a hedge fund, say their “I dos.”

The prospect of seeing the Clintons and any other celebrities has gripped residents, who uniformly describe “Chelsea’s weekend” as a “royal” event. Up to 500 people are expected to attend, and many of them wandered out of the Beekman last night in their evening finery to get a drink at Gigi Trattoria.

“I’m star-struck!” said Melodie Molinare, 50, the postmaster of Rhinebeck, as she stood on the packed street corner, held back by wooden police barricades. “I want to see them. I don’t have to touch them. I want to see Chelsea in her dress.”

Among those spotted going into the Beekman Friday included Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, with Vernon Jordan, the well-known Democratic power broker. (Mr. Jordan is not a well-recognized figure up here, and one man in the crowd across the street identified him as Hamilton Jordan, the late top aide to Jimmy Carter. Another identified him as Warren Buffett.)

One man in the crowd confidently identified another guest as Steve Madden, the shoe designer, who quickly raced inside the inn from a van. We have not been able to confirm that. 

He also identified another guest as Kobe Bryant, but we were told Mr. Bryant is not attending.

The vast majority of guests looked to be in their late 20s or 30s, perhaps college and work friends of the bride and groom. Perhaps they will be celebrities some day, but for now they can rest comfortably in their anonymity. They seemed to be a mixture of Arkansas and the hedge fund world. One blonde in a ballooning yellow dress walked across the street to the gawkfest and took pictures of the locals, then had her picture taken with them, then posed with a bemused and very patient state trooper.

“We don’t know who we’re looking at,” one bystander complained. “My God, they all look like they’re in their 20s. They’re kids! Seriously, I want to see Oprah.”

Onlookers clearly had varied definitions of celebrity. While one local was excited about spotting Terry McAuliffe, the celebrity spotting was less exciting for Rachel Squillante who lives in Manhattan but returned home to Rhinebeck for the weekend to catch a glimpse of some stars. Ms. Squillante, 24, and a friend had heard that Jennifer Lopez was in town. But the only big name guest they saw was Ms. Albright whom Ms. Squillante’s friend didn’t know.

Oprah Winfrey, Barbra Streisand, John Major and Steven Spielberg are said to not be coming. Still, several locals insisted that Ms. Winfrey had been spotted at the Holy Cow, a nearby ice cream shop, on Friday.

The anticipation in the crowd last night reached such a frenzy that when state troopers lined up between the gawkers and the guests, a woman from an Italian television station yelled to one of the troopers to move. “We can’t see!” she said. He smiled.

Arlene Newman drove with two friends from Castleton, a small town near Albany, to get a glimpse of the former president and the bride. After eating dinner, they waited more than two hours across from the Beekman Arms hoping to spot them.

“We heard Bill was here today,” Ms. Newman said. “We love him. My mom is in a nursing home. She loves him. We wish them well. It’s royalty. It’s our royalty.” She added that until now Ms. Clinton had succeeded in keeping her life private. “They left her alone,” she said. “They didn’t hound her like Princess Diana.”
As Ms. Newman’s friends chatted about how beautiful Chelsea Clinton had become since her youth and reminisced how she led her parents across the White House lawn following the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Ms. Newman agreed. “Aye, yi, yi. I hope she has lots of babies.”

Earlier in the evening, a handful of local business owners raised some sparkling wine at the Blue Cashew Kitchen supply to toast the vows of Marc and Chelsea. Ms. Pensiero said that at lunch yesterday, Mr. Clinton arrived at her restaurant with his half-brother, Roger, and a half-dozen guests whom she believed were friends and relatives. She said the former president greeted guests, shook hands with the kitchen’s workers and filled the restaurant with so much “electricity in the air” that “nobody had much of an appetite.” She said that she thanked Mr. Clinton for having lunch there and “he thanked me for putting up with the chaos.” Ms. Pensiero’s catering business had already been busy all week delivering roughly 200 meals a day to different businesses working on wedding preparations.

Other businesses already had benefited from the boost in business. Maureen Missner, whose shop Paper Trail is believed to be helping to prepare the gift bags, talked about how different the feel of this wedding was compared to last year when the actor Griffin Dunne held his wedding in the area and local residents spotted celebrities like Hugh Jackman.

She said that comparing it to Mr. Dunne’s wedding put these festivities into perspective. “This is not a star-studded wedding,” said Ms. Missner. “This is clearly about the bride and groom.”