Want to Get Married at the White House- It Helps if Grandpa Is the President

Even for a president used to high-stakes diplomacy, a White House wedding presents candy-coated challenges. On the other hand, this host can call in unbelievable favors.

On Tricia Nixon Cox’s wedding day in June 1971, clouds and rain threatened the planned Rose Garden ceremony. The father of the bride, President Richard Nixon, asked the Air Force for weather updates to find the best window.

“White House weddings are a lovely little part of the tapestry of White House history,” said Ms. Nixon Cox. Her ceremony before 400 guests was featured on television news. “People will still come up today and say they saw the wedding,” she said.

The White House has divulged few details about the Biden nuptials, other than to stress the family pays for it, as is customary. When Hillary Clinton’s brother Anthony Rodham married Nicole Boxer, daughter of then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), in 1994, the first lady barred her staffers from working on the personal event.

Democratic donor and event planner Bryan Rafanelli is managing the Biden wedding, according to people familiar with the plans.

The first couple—“Pop” and “Nana”— are close to their grandchildren, with the president saying he checks in with them regularly by phone. Ms. Biden is a lawyer and the eldest daughter of the president’s younger son, Hunter, and his first wife, Kathleen Buhle.

Mr. Neal, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania law school, and Ms. Biden met through a mutual friend in 2018, and he proposed in September 2021, the White House said.

Philip Dufour, social secretary to former Vice President Al Gore,

said White House weddings require a balance of privacy and pageantry.

“The stakes are high for any wedding, but a wedding on a national stage makes it even tougher,” he said.

Guests are invited to the White House for an 11 a.m. ceremony and then later to a black-tie evening reception, according to a copy of the invitation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. On white card stock with scripted font, it comes from “The President and Dr. Biden.”

Mr. Biden, who turns 80 on Sunday, might be in an especially celebratory mood after midterm elections that saw Democrats maintain control of the Senate and blunt Republican gains in the House.

For couples, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue offers a setting steeped in history and expert staff that has hosted world leaders, visiting royalty and celebrities.

Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush, said the professionalism of the White House staff is akin to having “in-house wedding planners.”

Then-first daughter Jenna Bush held a White House reception for friends and family shortly after her wedding in Crawford, Texas, in 2008.

There’s also the wow factor. White House couples becomes part of tradition dating to 1812, when Dolley Madison’s sister wed at the White House. The photo backdrop is Instagram-worthy, with the Rose Garden and South Lawn as options.

“Edward and I were walking on the ground of the White House and there had been a snowstorm and we came upon the Rose Garden and they thought how beautiful it was,” Ms. Nixon Cox said. “We both said: ‘Wouldn’t this be a charming place to have our wedding?’ ”

The usual wedding headaches, such as whether to invite that distant cousin and who gets to sit at the head table, become supersized at the White House.

First challenge: working around the president’s schedule. This one comes close to Mr. Biden’s weeklong trip to Asia. In December, Mr. Biden is expected to host his first state dinner.

Anything involving the guest list gets trickier. White House protocol requires visitors to submit birth dates and Social Security numbers to the Secret Service. And the excluded get a larger-than-usual megaphone for griping. It made headlines when no members of Congress were invited to Ms. Nixon Cox’s wedding.

Sometimes efforts to engage the public backfire, such as when the White House released a scaled-down recipe for the Nixon wedding cake only to have food writers complain that the batter overflowed the pan.

Labor organizers threatened to protest when President Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter Luci Baines Johnson, who had her 1966 reception at the White House, visited a dress shop with gowns made in a nonunion factory.

This year, the couple faces a problem familiar to the president and the American public: rising prices.

Washington-area event planner Kawania Wooten said weddings are about 15% to 20% pricier now than before the pandemic. Yet higher costs aren’t stopping over-the-top weddings.

“Everybody sat at home for two years, and they were on Instagram and TikTok and Pinterest, and they have these big ideas,” she said. “People are trying to mimic what they see on the red carpet.”

While the Nixon and Johnson weddings were media events, with news releases, interviews and televised ceremonies, recent White House weddings have been more private. The Biden White House hasn’t said if they will provide any photos or access to reporters.

White House weddings are usually reserved for family, but occasionally have been available to aides.

Pete Souza, the chief official White House photographer under then-President Barack Obama, married longtime girlfriend Patti Lease in the Rose Garden in 2013. Mr. Souza said the president himself suggested the venue.

“He was always pestering me about why haven’t you gotten married,” Mr. Souza said. It came up once on Air Force One, he said, and Mr. Obama offered to host the wedding at the White House, joking, “What, the Rose Garden’s not good enough for you?”

—Ken Thomas contributed to this article.

Write to Catherine Lucey at [email protected]