Jenna Bush has low-key wedding

The couple met during the president’s 2004 re-election campaign.

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — Jenna Bush couldn’t see herself getting married at the White House surrounded by antique furniture and oil portraits of presidents. She and Henry Hager opted to say “I do” Saturday at President Bush’s ranch in Crawford.

Away from the glare of television cameras that have beamed other first family weddings into American living rooms, Jenna’s outdoor wedding at the ranch reflects her family’s penchant for privacy and her preference for the casual over grandiose.

Even without the prying eyes of strangers, Jenna’s marriage to her longtime boyfriend Henry Hager will make presidential history. It will be remembered as an upbeat moment of Bush’s two-term presidency beset by terrorism, war and the nation’s current limp economy.

“This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband, Henry,” Bush said in his Saturday radio address. “It’s also a special time for Laura who this Mother’s Day weekend will watch a young woman we raised together walk down the aisle.”

Jenna, 26, is the 22nd child of a president to get married while their father was in the Oval Office. Their ceremonies have ranged from Tricia Nixon’s extravagant wedding broadcast live from the Rose Garden in 1971 to the 1992 Camp David wedding of Jenna’s aunt, Dorothy Koch. That one was kept so secret that the press didn’t find out about it until it was over.

“All of them are different. This one really reflects the personality of both Jenna and the George W. Bush family,” said Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents’ kin.

“If they’d have gone on TV, the wedding would have been shown all over the world and Jenna Bush would have been an international celebrity — and she would have been a target. They’re preparing the transition to private life and they’re not particularly interested in seeing Jenna Bush become a huge celebrity.”

It’s unlikely that paparazzi will be hanging out of helicopters to capture Hollywood-style aerial shots of the wedding. Airspace in a 30-mile radius of the property is restricted when the Bushes are there. Despite the lack of media coverage, however, Jenna’s wedding will be closely scrutinized — down to the matte beading and embroidery on her Oscar de la Renta gown.

Jenna’s twin sister, Barbara, is maid of honor and 14 other women are part of the “house party.” Barbara Bush is wearing wear a long, moonstone blue dress with a low-cut back. The women in the “house party” are in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palette of Texas wildflowers — blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds.

More than 200 family and friends are converging here for the nuptials on the 1,600-acre ranch that was hit by a brief storm that packed winds up to 50 mph and dropped nickel-size hail on the area.

Festivities began Friday with a bridal lunch, rehearsal dinner and Texas-size celebration in Salado, a tiny tourist village, which used to be a stagecoach stop, more than an hour’s drive south of Crawford. Jenna and her sister and mother were in Salado all day and the president arrived in the evening by motorcade.

The rehearsal dinner was hosted by the parents of the groom, who turned 30 on Friday. Hager’s father, John Hager, is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party and is former lieutenant governor of Virginia and former U.S. assistant secretary of education.

Henry Hager met Jenna during her father’s 2004 re-election campaign. He graduated from Wake Forest University and worked as an aide to Bush’s former top political adviser Karl Rove. He is set to receive a master’s degree in business administration later this month from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

Between February 2005 and January 2006, he was an economic policy aide in the office of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and regularly briefed the secretary on economic data.

After the wedding, the couple is rumored to be honeymooning in Europe, although the White House would not comment. After that, they plan to live in a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse on the south side of Baltimore. She plans to return to teaching and he will work for Constellation Energy, a power supplier based in Maryland.

The ceremony was to begin about a half-hour or so before sunset. The couple was to marry at a cross, made of beige colored Texas limestone, that was erected near the ranch’s man-made lake. It will serve as the altar and a landmark at the ranch for years to come.