The 60th Anniversary of the Wedding of John and
Jacqueline Kennedy
The Wedding of John and Jacqueline Kennedy
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Photos from the wedding of John and Jacqueline Kennedy,
September 12, 1953.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/Media-Gallery/The-Wedding-of-John-and-Jacqueline-Kennedy.aspx
Marriage of Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/marriage-jacqueline-bouvier-and-john-f-kennedy
Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy's wedding was
celebrated in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 12th, 1953.
The wedding was celebrated at St Mary’s Roman Catholic
Church in Newport, Rhode Island, on a crisp, sunny day. A
breeze whipped up whitecaps in the bay as waves of publicity powered by the
groom’s father, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, drew crowds to the streets. It
was he who had picked out Jacqueline Bouvier as the right wife for a future
president of the United States,
and he is said to have run the whole event like a Hollywood
production. The bride was twenty-four and the groom, United States Senator John
F. Kennedy of Massachusetts,
was thirty-six. She had warmed to her prospective father-in-law personally, and
to his money, but friends said she was nervous of marrying a confirmed
philanderer and of being swamped by his boisterous family.
Both bride and groom were Catholics. Her step-family, the
Auchinclosses, were Protestants, but Janet Auchincloss’s pleas for the ceremony
not to be ‘too Catholic’ were brushed aside. So were her requests for a
reasonably limited guest list. The Kennedys treated the wedding as a political
event and the hundreds of guests included senators and congressmen, Boston and Massachusetts
political figures and Hollywood luminaries.
Ambassador Kennedy had enlisted Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, to
conduct the nuptial mass (only because the Pope was not available, it was
said). The groom arrived with a scratched face after being knocked into a
rosebush in a last-minute game of touch football with his brothers and the
ushers. His best man was his brother Bobby.
The bride’s adored father, ‘Black Jack’ Bouvier, who was
supposed to lead her proudly down the aisle, was found drunk in his suite in
the Viking Hotel at ten that morning. He was discreetly shipped back to New York in an ambulance
and his place was taken by Jackie’s stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss. Inquisitive
reporters were told that poor ‘Black Jack’ had been suddenly stricken with flu.
When Jackie arrived at the church for the 11am ceremony, the crowd across the
street surged forward and almost swamped her. Her off-the-shoulder gown, which
she disliked intensely, was made of fifty yards of ivory silk taffeta. Her
younger sister Lee was matron of honour and the eleven bridesmaids were in pink
taffeta.
The reception was at an Auchincloss residence, Hammersmith
Farm, where Jackie and Jack stood in the receiving line for three hours to
greet the 1,300 guests. Opportunities for political gladhanding were fully
exploited. The ambassador’s glamorous ex-mistress Gloria Swanson did not crash
the party, as the womenfolk of both families had feared. After champagne,
lunch, speeches and dancing, the bride and groom left for a short honeymoon in Acapulco. The media
coverage was extremely satisfactory. The tragedy lay ten years ahead.