Celebrity Mound

A White House wedding reception for first daughter Jenna and new husband Henry Hager on Saturday night drew hundreds of friends and family, including President Bush, who took to the dance floor.

The United States Marine Band played a selection of standards and other “oldies-but-goodies,” one of the guests tells PEOPLE, for the Republican-heavy crowd of 600 including secretaries of state past and present, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

President Bush danced, as did First Lady Laura Bush and their two daughters, Barbara and her newlywed sister Jenna, who is just back from her Hawaiian honeymoon, the guest says.

“The President looked pretty cool,” says the guests. “He was a good dancer. He was having a great time.”

After the reception, the groom’s parents, John and Maggie Hager, invited friends to join them at the Old Ebbitt Grill a few steps from the White House and a favorite hangout for politicos.

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It’s official: Jenna Welch Bush wed Henry Chase Hager Saturday – making her the first daughter of a sitting United States president to marry in 16 years.

The pair exchanged vows just before sundown in a lakeside ceremony threatened by a tornado watch at President Bush’s secluded 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell, of the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, presided over the “I do’s” before a 4-foot limestone cross and altar that were the president’s idea for the occasion and will stand as a permanent landmark on the Bushes’ property.

‘A Joyous Occasion’
“This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of (Jenna) and her husband, Henry,” the president said in his weekly radio broadcast Saturday morning. “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.”

A source at the ranch told PEOPLE that the president alone, in traditional style, was escorting the bride to the altar. A White House spokeswoman said she did not know if Jenna planned to take the name Hager as her own.

Dinner and dancing for the 200 guests – including family and only the closest of friends, including longtime presidential advisers Karl Rove and Karen Hughes – were being held under tents.

The Wedding Dress
Jenna, 26, in an embroidered organza Oscar de la Renta gown, was attended by twin sister Barbara, the maid of honor, who wore a dress of moonstone blue shimmer with a silver sash. De la Renta, a close friend of the family, also designed First Lady Laura Bush’s deep turquoise “mother-of-the-bride” gown.

White House spokeswoman Sally McDonough said the colors – from the dresses to the décor – were selected to mirror the “very natural” colors of the central Texas landscape: the blues of the lake where Bush fishes for bass, the greens of Mrs. Bush’s prized buffalo grass (native grass that she restored to the property) and the lavendar, yellow and blue of the wildflowers.

Henry’s brother, John, stood as Best Man. In keeping with Jenna’s desire for an “organic and natural” feel to the wedding, the men dressed in suits – not black tie. And dancing was accompanied not by a fussy orchestra, but by Nashville-based wedding singer Tyrone Smith, otherwise known as Super T and a favorite at Southern frat parties.

Henry, whose father is a prominent Virginia Republican, celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday amid wedding festivities that included a rehearsal dinner and “Texas-size” afterparty. He met Jenna in 2004, when both of them were working on her father’s reelection campaign.

Finishing up his final year at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, he is expected to get his degree later this month and then begin work for an energy company based in Baltimore, Md., where he and Jenna recently bought a townhouse.

The last time a sitting president’s child was married was the 1992 Camp David wedding of Dorothy Koch, daughter of President George H.W. Bush, Jenna’s grandfather.

THE Delano management must be Democrats. When Jenna Bush’s fiancé, Henry Hager, went to South Beach for his bachelor party Saturday night, he was denied entry into the Florida Room lounge at the famed hotel. Spies said, “Harry and 20 of his friends were turned away.” The excuse? Bobby Flay, one of the South Beach Food + Wine Festival chefs, was holding court there for a private party. Hager and his frat pack had to make do with partying poolside.

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Jenna Bush and her fiancé Henry Hager will marry in a ceremony on May 10, two sources confirm to PEOPLE.

One of the sources says the wedding will be held at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“It’s going to be a small wedding,” the source tells PEOPLE, adding that Jenna has already selected her bridesmaids. “She’s very excited. They make a great couple.”

The couple’s engagement was announced in August. First Lady Laura Bush told PEOPLE in November that she “of course” fancied the idea of a White House wedding herself. It “would be a lot of fun,” said Mrs. Bush. “But I also know it wouldn’t be very private. And of course we want to do what Jenna wants to do.”

At the Bushes’ gated, 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel ranch, the ceremony and reception could be held far from the prying eyes of the White House press corps and paparazzi.

Hager, 29, a former Commerce Department staff member who’s in his final year of the MBA program at Virginia’s Darden School, first consulted Jenna’s twin sister, Barbara, about his intentions to propose to the 26-year-old.

“That was really sweet, because they have such a close relationship, Barbara and Jenna do,” Mrs. Bush told PEOPLE. Then, on the overlook outside the president’s cabin at Camp David, Hager asked the president and first lady for their daughter’s hand. They kept the plan secret from their daughter for more than a month until Hager proposed to Jenna on Aug. 15.

“I am thrilled for Henry and Jenna, knowing how great marriage can be,” said the president.

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Jenna Bush, phone home. The first daughter appeared nervous when Ellen DeGeneres asked her to call her parents during a taping of DeGeneres’ talk show Tuesday. The show aired Wednesday. “They’re going to kill me,” the 26-year-old told DeGeneres. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“No, they’re going to be thrilled,” DeGeneres said. “Why wouldn’t they want to say `hi’ to everybody and say Merry Christmas?”

“They may have wanted some warning,” responded Bush, who was on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to promote her new book, “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope.”

All was well, though, when she reached her parents on speakerphone.

“I’m just sitting here with daddy,” Laura Bush told her daughter, to which DeGeneres chimed in: “Oh hey! It’s Ellen. I wanted to say hi to daddy.”

So the president got on the line: “How’s my little girl doing?”

“Oh, she’s great. She’s scared she’s going to get in trouble because I just said, `Is it easy to just pick up the phone and call your dad anytime?’” DeGeneres said. “And now she’s scared she’s not going to get any Christmas presents.”

Bush said he wasn’t angry.

“I do want to say Merry Christmas to your audience, and I want to tell my little girl I love her,” the president said.

“I love you too, Dad,” Jenna responded.

THE audience members at the Regency Club in L.A. who came Wednesday to hear Jenna Bush read from her new book, “Ana’s Story,” were shocked at how she was introduced. “I’ve known Jenna and her sister since they were born. It’s so great, this book, but I was surprised. I fully thought her book would be telling girls how to get a fake ID,” cracked Brad Freeman, a friend of the Bush family and financial supporter of President Bush. Freeman told Page Six that Jenna “understands my sense of humor” and even calls him “Uncle Brad.” “It was just a joke. She wasn’t upset,” Freeman said.

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First Daughter Jenna Bush

First Daughter Barbara Bush and First Lady Laura Bush

Laura Bush and First Twins Jenna and Barbara took in Tony-nominated Christine Ebersole’s performance in “Grey Gardens” Tuesday night. One observer noted that while the first lady sat poker-faced, her daughters laughed throughout the show. Maybe Laura didn’t like the line delivered by Ebersole as “Little Edie” Beale speaking about East Hampton, “It’s a mean, nasty Republican town. They can get you for wearing red shoes on a Thursday.”

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JENNA Bush has morphed from a schoolteacher into a humanitarian. The first daughter – who’s been missing in action from U.S. watering holes and these pages – turned up in Paraguay last week on a 10-day UNICEF trip for volunteers. Following in the footsteps of her cousin Lauren Bush, the spokeswoman for the World Food Program, Jenna is now in Panama starting an internship with the children’s organization, reports the Washington Post. Between hugging AIDS orphans and fighting against child labor, she dined with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and his wife.

(via Page Six)