Chapter 167: Wedding Bells

We began to see quite a bit more of the Tusks over the winter. Tessa would come down and she and Marilyn began planning the wedding. Tusker would come down with her, and he and I would drink beer. I think we had the better deal. The wedding was scheduled for Saturday, June 23, and just kept getting bigger. It was sort of like Stormy in that regard, in that it began small and cute, and quickly became a monster that would devour your dinner! Normally a bride would be married at her home church, but that was Our Lady of Grace in Parkton, which was nowhere near big enough to handle what this thing was going to be, and there was nowhere nearby really able to provide the security necessary.

It was decided that we would have the wedding at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, probably the fanciest Catholic church in Washington. After that, everyone would come back to the White House for the reception. Since this was just too big for a pair of housewives to really coordinate, we brought in the Chief Usher and the White House Social Secretary to run it. That way my daughter might manage to be married while I was still in office. All I needed to do was get out my checkbook and simply write out lots of zeroes. I don’t know what Tricky Dick spent marrying off Tricia, but even accounting for inflation, I had a terrible feeling I was going to blow that budget to hell and gone!

I checked in with the Social Secretary from time to time to see just how elaborate this thing was growing. They had hired a professional wedding planner to assist them. They couldn’t use Marilyn’s wedding gown, since both the girls were considerably bustier than their mother had been at that age. Instead, Molly was getting a Vera Wang original, who was personally designing the dress, as well as the bridesmaid’s dresses and Marilyn’s and Tessa’s dresses. I didn’t want to think about what that was going to cost! Father Smith, Marilyn’s and the kids’ regular preacher at Our Lady of Grace, would be doing a command performance at St. Matthew’s, which was somewhat unusual but was eased by a generous contribution (from me; I learned about it after the fact) to the parish’s building fund. We managed to keep the number of bridesmaids and groomsmen down to five on each side, without any of the silly miniature bride and groom nonsense, and the kids eschewed any ring bearer or flower girl - the only members of the family young enough for that sort of thing were their second cousins up in New York, and they weren’t that close to them. Holly was going to be the Maid of Honor, and Charlie was the Best Man, and the rest of the slots would be college buddies and other friends.

The real expense, however, would be in the reception. Since this was purely a personal event, nothing would be covered by the taxpayers except for overall security. The cost was probably going to be at least several hundred dollars a plate by the time it was done. Yeah, I know, I am wealthier than Croesus, but still! When I married Maggie off on the first go, we spent about $75 a seat at the reception, at a country club in Albany, and had a pretty nice time. That wasn’t going to cut it for just the hors d’oeuvres on this thing!

Meanwhile, the list of guests just kept growing. If we invited immediate family only, that was Marilyn and me and our three kids, and Tusker, Tessa, and Bucky. Then move out to the next layer, all that first level of relatives, Marilyn’s parents and her brothers and sisters, and their families, and the various Tusks and Harpers (Tessa’s family), and the Rottingens. That totaled another hundred people right there! Forget about saying ‘No children!’ since that simply wasn’t done in the Lefleur household. Marilyn and I would never hear the end of it from her family. Add in a few dozen more, for friends of the bride and groom and their ‘plus ones’. Then start adding in friends and guest of the proud parents. For instance, we added Bill and Melinda Gates. Marilyn and I had been at their wedding, and we invited them. Ditto the Dells. The entire Buckminster family was invited, including Captain Buckminster and his fiancée if he could get leave, as well as 2^nd Lieutenant Buckminster, wherever he was stationed. Add in my partners at the Buckman Group, Marty Adrianopolis, and my top lawyers. Tusker invited a few people he knew at Honda and Harley. Then, for real fun, let’s add in John and Cindy McCain, and my senior staff, some of whom had been with me since my Congressional days. Then, if I invite one Cabinet member, I had to invite them all. What about Congress and the Senate? I limited that to the Leaders and Whips and the Speaker and tossed the Dedricks in for good measure.

It seemed to keep growing. By the time the summer rolled around, the wedding was beginning to approximate the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, though hopefully without the same end. Will Brucis had one of his people coordinating the broadcasting of the event. That took me by surprise! Broadcasting? I told him to sell the rights and maybe I could make a profit on the deal. I contemplated just giving the wedding planner a power of attorney over my bank account. That probably wouldn’t be enough, though.

And then June 23 rolled around. The festivities started the weekend before. As the best man, Charlie was in charge of the bachelor party, and he asked me for a favor, so I in turn called in a favor from Jake Eisenstein, who called in a favor from Steve Wynn. We loaded the wedding party onto the G-IV, both the guys and the girls, and flew them out to Vegas. Steve put them into a couple of giant suites at the Wynn, one for the guys and one for the girls, and promised to run them everywhere in limos, so none of the idiots would do something stupid, like driving drunk. We flew them out Friday afternoon, and he promised to load their remains back onto the Gulfstream on Sunday evening. We kept the Secret Service presence quiet and low key. I was reliably informed afterwards that the hangovers should be mostly over by the morning of the wedding, that the arrest reports had been buried, and that the videos were completely deniable. When I saw them the following Monday morning, they all looked back through bleary and bloodshot eyes. Marilyn and I were unsympathetic with our children.

All sorts of strange people began showing up in the White House. I think the wedding planner took up residence somewhere, and Vera Wang and crew wandered through at all hours, with Marilyn or the girls in tow. I had the house on 30^th Street reserved for the Lefleur family when they came down. Otherwise, I had several blocks of rooms set aside at the Hay-Adams, Hyatt, and Ritz-Carlton. We also had just about every limo in the city reserved. For the honeymoon, we would load the happy couple into the G-IV and send them to Hougomont, with instructions to the Secret Service detachment to stay away from the house and the immediate grounds, and to keep the paparazzi far, far away.

My daughters decided to have fun with Dad by changing things at the last moment, or at least threatening to. One of the wackier hoaxes was when, four days before the wedding, Molly asked if Stormy could be taught to carry a pillow on her back, maybe strapped to her collar, with the rings on it. Stormy could march down the aisle in front of her. She was part of the family, right? My jaw dropped and I stared, and then stood up and started hollering while she and her sister scampered out of the room, laughing. Marilyn sat there listening to this, and I rounded on her.

“Don’t blame me! They just like to push your buttons!” she said.

“Stormy? Carrying the rings? Have they lost their minds?” I looked over at the doorway, and who came romping in but the mutt, who jumped into my empty recliner. “Don’t you start!” I told the dog. “I’m down to my last nerve, and you are standing on it!”

I got a WOOF in return, so I just rubbed her head. There was no way in the world Stormy was going to get involved in this disaster. I’d probably have to pay for a $1,000 Vera Wang designed pillow to carry the rings.

Marilyn laughed at all this. I began to head down to the Oval Office early and stay late and went to the Situation Room to see what was happening in the rest of the world. Maybe there was a nice war somewhere which would give me a little rest. I told Frank I needed the overtime to pay for it all. He replied, “I’d laugh, but you’d probably un-invite me, which would make my girlfriend un-invite me. No thanks!”

“You have time for a girlfriend? I have to give you more work!” He laughed at that and left. It wasn’t all that funny. The poor schmucks who worked around the White House often had no time for their own lives. Fifteen- or sixteen-hour days were not unheard of. It’s very easy to take advantage of them. Burnout is quite common.

Friday afternoon was the rehearsal, which I missed due to a phone call with the Japanese Prime Minister. The rehearsal dinner was at the Hyatt, where the men in the bridal party had a suite. I did make it to the dinner. I wasn’t all that worried about screwing up my part in the proceedings. My job was easy. Molly would be the last one up the aisle, and I would be with her. It wasn’t like I was going to get lost.

It was at the rehearsal dinner that I first met my other children’s dates for the first time. Holly brought a long-haired and bushy-bearded chemistry doctoral student from Princeton named Jerry Something-or-other. He truly resembled a homeless vagrant who had been cleaned up and pushed into a suit that didn’t quite fit, as if the last time he had worn it was when he graduated from high school. I whispered to Marilyn after Holly introduced us, “Is this the best she could do?”

“You behave yourself!” was my wife’s reply.

“I’m just saying, I mean, he looks like a bum!”

“I’m sure he’s very nice,” she added, a bit defensively, I thought.

I shrugged. I had glanced over at Holly, who was talking to Jerry. “Well, if they are still seeing each other at Christmas, tell Holly she should get him some decent clothing and a haircut for Christmas.” Marilyn just laughed at that and promised to try.

He seemed a bit of a nitwit, too. I was getting a drink at the bar, where Charlie and Jerry were standing with beers in their hands. I ordered a couple of glasses of Riesling, so I could take one to Marilyn, and I overheard Jerry ask Charlie, “So what school did you go to?”

Charlie didn’t miss a beat. “The University of Monrovia. I majored in International Relations.”

Jerry seemed impressed, but asked, “Where’s that?” at which point Holly, who had been listening, dragged him away.

I smiled at my son, who tipped his beer towards me and said, “Our school motto was Semper Fi.”

“Ours was Airborne!”

“OOO-RAH!”

I chuckled and left to take Marilyn her wine. With luck, Holly would come to her senses.

Charlie’s date, on the other hand, was a spectacular blonde. After we had been introduced, I had asked Marilyn privately if she was another member of Charlie’s Blonde-Of-The-Week Club.

“Megan is a very nice girl. She and your son have been dating since February,” I was informed.

“February! Charlie, with a girl for more than two weeks? Something must be wrong! Did you check his temperature? Maybe he’s sick?”

“Carl! That’s awful! That’s your son you’re talking about! Besides, maybe he’s settling down,” my wife protested.

I looked at her curiously. “Charlie? Settling down? Charlie Buckman? Are you sure we are talking about the same person? Charles Robert Buckman, and not Charles Horace Buckman?”

Marilyn had the good grace to give me a guilty shrug at that. “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it? They met when he was doing that dreadful movie in Hollywood. She was one of the biker girls in the background. We had a chance to talk the other day. She’s a very nice girl. You should be nice to her.”

“Okay, I’ll be nice. I wonder what caught Charlie’s attention first, the legs or the...”

“CARL!”

“Just wondering, honey, just wondering.”

She punched my arm. “You’re not supposed to notice those things!”

“Well, I can guarantee Charlie noticed them!” I got a finger wag at that and decided to keep my mouth shut from that point on.

Ultimately, everything worked out. The women’s bridal party spent Friday night in the Residence, and I hid in my bedroom. Charlie had the men at the suite in the Hyatt, and I had issued my strongest warnings about letting Bucky or anybody else get liquored up. I also told the Secret Service to pat the nitwits down and confiscate anything that looked like it might be fun. Bucky was to show up at the wedding straight and sober, with Charlie and the rest of the crew in the same condition. Marilyn and Tessa were to supervise the bridesmaids.

The wedding was to take place at 4:00 PM at St. Matthews, and the reception was to begin at 7:00 PM at the White House in the East Room. Since it was to be a full Mass at the church, we probably wouldn’t get out of there before 5:00 or 5:30, and then we would have to take photos, just like at any other wedding. Then it would be off to the White House, and if anybody got there earlier, they could hang out in the State Dining Room, which was being set up for something to eat and drink before the official reception. I think the final count ended up somewhere north of 375, but I had lost track of both the invitees and the budget.

As we were all leaving the White House to go to St. Matthews, I gave a pronouncement to everyone around. Nothing was to disturb me the rest of the day. If somebody started a war, I wasn’t to be informed unless they used large nuclear weapons. Small ones weren’t going to cut it. Likewise, if I was disturbed, my response would probably involve large nuclear weapons, and I wasn’t being all that particular if the individual disturbing me was foreign or domestic. I was going to nuke somebody! Marilyn just rolled her eyes and hustled me out the door.

All things considered; everything went quite well. On my first go, Maggie had been so nervous she had thrown up for twenty-four hours ahead of time and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time we started walking down the aisle. Then the flower girl, Parker’s daughter Elspeth, got an itch on her butt, and decided to scratch it the entire time she was walking down the aisle in front of us. The entire church got to watch my granddaughter scratch her ass in church. Maggie and I almost died laughing as I walked her down the aisle, and everything after that went fine.

It wasn’t quite that bad this time. Molly was a lot calmer, for one thing. I waited with them in a small room off the entrance of the church. Charlie had the intended victim up front, in another small room near the sanctuary. I found a seat and watched while Marilyn and the girls fussed, then got up and wandered down to see Charlie. I slipped in and found Charlie joking and Bucky nervous. Tusker was standing there with his son, and smiled as I came in “How you holding up, Bucky?” I asked.

“Uh, okay, Uncle Carl. Uh, is ... how is...”, he stuttered out. Charlie simply muttered something and shook his head, smiling.

I smacked my son on the back of his head and said, “I can’t wait to see you doing this. I’ll laugh my ass off!” I turned back to Bucky and answered, “They are all here. Your bride is waiting for this whole mess to start and looks gorgeous.” I looked over at Tusker. “Is he going to make it, or do we need to get a crash cart in here to revive him?”

“I don’t recall being that nervous when I got married.”

“At least he’s not bringing his children to the wedding,” I retorted.

Tusker barked out a laugh. “Oh, that is cold, buddy, that is cold!”

Bucky breathed easier on hearing his fiancée was there. Charlie asked, “Why aren’t you with the girls?”

“Because the guests are still arriving and because a pack of half a dozen women would drive a saint crazy, let alone me! If I’m in here, your mother can’t tell me to behave!”

He snorted out a laugh, and then reached into his jacket and pulled out a silver flask. “I can help your problem, you know.”

I gave him a wry look. “I thought I told you to keep him sober.”

“Hey, he’s sober, and so am I. We’ve been behaving all night long.” He waved the flask under my nose. “Hmmm?”

“Screw it, why not.” I took it from him and took a swig, and then handed it to my soon-to-be son-in-law. I swallowed my drink with a bit of a grimace. “That’s right, you like bourbon, don’t you?” I might not like it, but I did get that familiar warming feeling as it went down. I also knew that if we sat around drinking it long enough, I’d learn to like it, too.

Charlie grinned and took a sip and passed it to Tusker. “As opposed to that sissy stuff you drink from Canada and Ireland. I’m surprised your party hasn’t censured you for that already.”

“My party! The Republicans? Please, don’t ruin my day and tell me you’re a Democrat! It’s bad enough with your mother and sisters, but I was hoping that you at least actually had hair on your balls!” I took back the flask and took a second sip.