The Presidents and Their Wives: 10 Amazing Wedding Stories

Presidents and their Wives:
10 Amazing Wedding Stories
that you might find almost unbelievable.
The USA has had a lot of presidents in the history of our country,
and each one has a unique wedding story!

 

Do you know which former president’s wife knew taxidermy and was fluent in Chinese?

Or which president was a Quaker, yet got married by a Catholic priest?

And then there was the president who met his future wife when she was just a baby!

Today we’re sharing some interesting stories about marriages of presidents and their wives in the history of the USA.

A few of them are almost unbelievable.

 

 

1. William Howard and Nellie Taft, June 19,1886

Nellie was truly a beautiful bride, wearing a short-sleeved pouffy dress and elegant matching something in her updo.

They married quietly at her parent’s home.

Then they left on a honeymoon that started in New York City and Sea Bright, New Jersey. From there they went to Europe for three months. Someone must have had money.

 

 

2. Herbert and Lou Hoover, February, 1889

Lou was a California girl. She wasn’t a beach beauty, but she loved the outdoors. She and her dad went camping together, and she became a proficient taxidermist. Her love of rocks and minerals led her to graduate with a BA in Geology from Stanford University. Fluent in Chinese, she is the only First Lady ever to know an Asian language.

University is where she met Herbert, a Quaker. Lou was Episcopalian, but they were married by a Catholic priest. This created a bit of a scandal because of anti-Catholic sentiment at that time. But the reason was simple and innocent. Lou grew up in a neighborhood where the priest organized children’s activities she attended and remembered fondly, and the minister of their own church died just weeks before the wedding. Even then the media was good at twisting the facts to suit their agenda.

 

 

3. Lyndon Baines and Lady Bird Johnson, November 17, 1934

Claudia Alta Taylor, known as Bird, met Lyndon Baines Johnson through a friend of hers. Later she told the friend she had been drawn to him “like a moth to a flame.”

He must have felt the same way, because he proposed to her on their first date! She was too cautious to accept, but in the next 90 days they exchanged 90 letters. She was definitely in love by then.

Their wedding was in San Antonio, so it’s no surprise that their honeymoon was in Mexico.

Theirs is the picture that made history when LBJ was sworn into the presidency aboard a plane as the newly widowed Jackie Kennedy looked on. He was vice president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

 

 

 

 

4. The First President and his Wife: George and Martha Washington, January 6, 1759

George was 26 when he married Martha, who was 27, a widow with 4 children.

So much of their story is unknown. We do know he wore a blue suit trimmed in red and gold knee buckles. Martha wore a blue dress to match his suit.

 

 

5. Barack and Michelle Obama, October 3, 1993

Barack had a cold the day of their wedding, but that didn’t stop them from dancing almost all night at their reception.

Michele says they’ve always had a lot of fun, and at the time of their 25th anniversary in 2018 she said she couldn’t imagine taking “this wild ride” with anyone but Barack.

 

 

 

6. Bill and Hilary Clinton, October 11, 1975

Bill and Hilary didn’t keep track of how many times he proposed to her before she finally accepted.

The final tipping point?

He bought a house she had mentioned she liked. She figured if he’d buy a house for her he was committed enough to spend the rest of his life with her.

She claimed she loved him deeply all along, but just didn’t know what she wanted with her life. Even then she had goals she didn’t want to jeopardize by marrying the wrong man.

 

 

7. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, March 4, 1952

Ronnie was a romantic. He made drawings he gifted to Nancy signed I.T.W.W.W.  It was short for I love you more than anyone “in the whole wide world.”

Ronald and Nancy met because she needed him to clear her name. An actress accused of being a communist sympathizer was becoming mistaken as her, and Ronald could clear it up as president of the screen actors guild. They liked each other right away, and soon he said, “Let’s get married.” She said, “Let’s.” And so they married within a year.

And a few years later one of the “Presidents and their Wives” was an actor and actress.

 

 

 

8. George and Laura Bush, November 5, 1977

First of all, George was a very handsome groom. Does that surprise you? Well, pictures we see now are of an older president, without the dark, curly mop of hair of a young man.

He always claimed marrying Laura as the best decision he ever made in his life. Awww.

And Laura, an only child, thrilled to gain 5 siblings, the 6 children in George’s family. Laura was a public school teacher and a librarian before marrying at 31. She bought a pretty tan dress off the rack for their wedding.

 

 

9. John and Jackie Kennedy, September 12, 1953

Ten bridesmaids! Jackie had ten bridesmaids, plus a maid of honor, all wearing pink taffeta.

But her own, unique wedding dress almost didn’t happen. The designer had her dress almost finished when a pipe burst in her shop and destroyed much of her inventory. They scrambled to sew another dress in time for the wedding.

 

 

 

10. Grover and Frances Cleveland, June 6, 1886

Grover was 27 when he met Frances. She was a baby! Then when she was 11, her father died suddenly without a will. Grover became the administrator of her father’s estate. Ten years later, the president married his wife in a small ceremony in the White House. She was 21 and he was 48.

Frances wore a dress so stiff it could stand by itself. Later she revamped it into an evening gown she wore to White House affairs.

Which is your favorite wedding story
of these presidents and their wives?

 

PS: Thanks to Wikipedia and other websites for the info in this post.