Celebrity Mound

It’s no state secret anymore: Chelsea Clinton is a married woman.

The former First Daughter, resplendent in a strapless white Vera Wang gown before a star-studded crowd, exchanged vows with longtime beau Marc Mezvinsky at a lavish wedding on a gorgeous summer evening.

“We watched with great pride and overwhelming emotion as Chelsea and Marc wed in a beautiful ceremony … surrounded by family and their close friends,” said Chelsea’s parents, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Clinton, in a statement announcing the marriage.

“We could not have asked for a more perfect day to celebrate the beginning of their life together, and we are so happy to welcome Marc into our family.”

Bright sunshine and tight security greeted the 500 A-list guests at the year’s most exclusive wedding, held on a 50-acre estate overlooking the Hudson River.

The site was sealed off from the public, but the family released wedding photos late last night.

One shows the newly slimmed-down former President in a dark suit and tie, escorting his daughter arm in arm down the aisle as row after row of relatives and friends look on.

Chelsea’s billowing, floor-length gown had silver beading around the waist and she carried a bouquet of white flowers. Her mother wore a fuchsia Oscar de la Renta dress.

The groom wore a black tuxedo, white prayer shawl and yarmulke. A horseshoe of white roses decorated the gazebo where the couple exchanged vows.

The storybook wedding was conducted by a rabbi and a minister – Chelsea is Methodist and Mezvinsky is Jewish – and included the reading of a poem titled “The Life That I Have,” the family said.

The poem, by Leo Marks, begins:

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

Actor Ted Danson and his Oscar-winning wife, Mary Steenburgen, dress designer Wang and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were among those joining the Clintons at the nuptials for their only child.

“I’m sure Bill will be crying,” predicted Danson, a longtime friend of the Clintons, after driving to tiny but tony Rhinebeck for the gala affair.

Chelsea’s uncle Roger Clinton sidestepped questions about whether his brother teared up during the ceremony, only saying it was touching.

“It was a very emotional moment between a mother, daughter, and a father. Hillary was very emotional,” Roger Clinton said.

Other rumored guests for the big day included Clinton pals Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand.

Security was hyper-tight as the former White House preteen – long used to life in the spotlight – was wed with nary a reporter, news photographer or network camera crew in sight. Security measures for the elegant ceremony at sprawling Astor Courts included the Secret Service, state police cruising for paparazzi on the Hudson, road closings and a no-fly zone over Rhinebeck.

Mezvinsky, 32, got a wedding day shave from a local barber to remove several days of stubble. After 25 minutes with a steaming towel and some hot lather, he was good to go.

“He didn’t seem nervous,” said Peter Morfea, owner of Iconic Hair. “Marc seemed like a regular nice person. He seemed chill.”

Steenburgen, an Arkansas native and friend of the Clintons since Bill’s days as governor, said she was thrilled for the newlyweds.

“I’ve known her since she was a little girl,” Steenburgen said of Chelsea. “She’s a beautiful girl, and he’s a wonderful guy.”

Other early arrivals included close Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan and entertainment impresario Steve Bing – a major Democratic Party donor.

Here comes the bride. There goes the cash.

On Saturday Chelsea Clinton is set to marry her investment-banker boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky at a posh private estate 90 miles north of Manhattan.

The hotly anticipated, highly secretive affair has been called the Wedding of the Decade and of the Century.

Extravagant and notable events like that don’t come cheap.

Experts in all things nuptial ballpark the cost of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s little girl’s big day at anywhere from $3 million to $5 million.

That’s a lotta lettuce. And wedding cake.

“I don’t think we’ve seen a wedding with this much attention since Patricia Nixon,” says Donnie Brown, a wedding planner featured in “Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?” on the Style Network.

“This will definitely be the biggest wedding of the year.”

At the more conservative cost of $3 million, that’s a half-million behind Liza Minnelli and David Gest and a cool $1 million ahead of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

But this is different from your garden-variety superstar wedding, experts concur. This union includes world leaders and, well, Oprah.

“It’s bigger and more important than a celebrity wedding,” according to celebrity event planner Diann Valentine. “It will certainly be the most influential of setting trends. If anything becomes public knowledge it will immediately set a trend.”

As such, no expense will be spared.

If you’re crunching the numbers, at a budget of $3 million and with 500 of the former First Family’s nearest and dearests in attendance (that’s the anticipated count), it comes out to $6,000 a head.

It’s not called a Big Day for nothing.

On the plus side, Bill and Hillary Clinton can afford it. Between 2000 and 2007 they earned a reported $109 million.

If you’ve ever planned a wedding, costs accumulate faster than you can say “I promise to love, honor and obey.”

That fact is multiplied many times over when it’s a celebrity wedding, where the bride’s dress must be designer, the flowers must be exotic and the table service A-plus to pamper the privileged palates.

And don’t forget the luxe air-conditioned tents where the guests will chow and party down. They’re estimated to cost about $600,000 for this Clintonfest.

Another factor is something mere mortals don’t have to think about when tying the knot: security. Wedding crashers at celeb weddings are legion — from reporters looking for scoops, paparazzi seeking snaps and, well, nutjobs looking to get in on the action.

Security at Saturday’s wedding on the grounds of Astor Courts — a private, French-style mansion on 50 acres overlooking the Hudson — could cost $200,000 because of all the high-level politicians and global celebrities.

There’s “access by land, water and air,” says Sharon Stimpfle, spokeswoman for TheKnot.com. “Someone’ll be monitoring air traffic.”

Indeed, don’t be surprised if the Clintons may need to pony up extra dough to shut down air space (paparazzi in helicopters are drawn to celeb weddings like bees to honey) or to pay overtime to local cops who’ll monitor traffic near the nups.

Upscale wedding planner Claudia Hanlin notes that “certain elements make it add up very, very quickly. One, having a venue that costs a bundle. That could be one that’s privately owned, or it could be buying out a hotel, it could be being in Italy and buying out a villa.

“And food and booze are already expensive,” she continues, “but the Clintons are reportedly hiring multiple vendors, which is one reason the food estimate gets so high.”

Even little details push the price tag up, up, up. Like place settings for the lucky 500. New York caterer Peter Callahan says that at Chelsea and Marc’s wedding they could go can go for $100 apiece.

“The bride goes through to select things and it’s like a candy store,” he says, “‘I’ll take this, I’ll take that.’?”

Brown says they’ve probably spent more than $150 apiece for the invitations. “The aisle runner is probably hand-painted,” he says.

It’s been said before – money can buy you almost anything.

Chelsea Clinton was at the Astor Place Starbucks yesterday morning in jogging clothes, drinking iced coffee and Smart Water, texting and talking on her BlackBerry about her upcoming wedding.

“Chelsea had a huge rock on her finger and was reading a book by Donna Leon,” a spy said, who sadly couldn’t overhear details.

Democrats are dying to know who will be among the 400 guests at the July 31 nuptials in Rhinebeck. “This is the closest Americans get to a royal wedding,” noted one Dem who won’t be invited.

Turns out those discredited rumors of a possible Chelsea Clinton wedding last summer were mostly just premature: The 29-year old daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, 31-year old investment banker Marc Mezvinsky.

The couple sent an e-mail to friends Friday announcing the news, saying they were looking at a possible wedding next summer. Matt McKenna, a spokesman for the former president, confirmed the engagement Monday.

Mezvinsky is a son of former Pennsylvania Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and former Iowa Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, longtime friends of the Clintons. Ed Mezvinsky was released from federal prison last year after serving a nearly five-year sentence for wire and bank fraud.

Margolies-Mezvinsky served just one term in Congress before losing her seat in 1994 after voting in favor of President Clinton’s 1993 budget, which was controversial at the time.

At the State Department Monday, Hillary Clinton had one brief encounter with reporters but took no questions. Later, her spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, was asked about the reported engagement but said it would be inappropriate for him to comment.

“I have a daughter who’s around, she’s 22 years old. And the last thing I would want would be for the State Department spokesman to talk about the personal plans of my daughter, so I am going to decline any comment on that,” Kelly said.

The former first daughter and her fiance became friends as teenagers in Washington and both attended Stanford University. They now live in New York, where Mezvinsky works at G3 Capital, a Manhattan hedge fund, and Clinton is pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Public Health.

Before returning to graduate school, Clinton worked at Avenue Capital, a hedge fund run by prominent Democratic donor Marc Lasry. She also worked at McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm.

Since her debut on the public stage as a curly haired 12-year-old during her father’s 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton has maintained a fairly low public profile. That changed in 2008, when the press-shy Clinton stepped out on the campaign trail to help her mother’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Before beginning a relationship with Mezvinsky, Clinton dated Ian Klaus, a Rhodes Scholar she met while studying international relations at Oxford in 2002. Klaus dedicated his first book, “Elvis is Titanic,” about his experience teaching in the Kurdistan province of Iraq, to Clinton.

Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton was forced to tamp down speculation that her daughter and Mezvinsky were already engaged and would marry in August on Martha’s Vineyard. President Barack Obama, who was vacationing on the island at the time, was rumored to be on the guest list.

Aides to Hillary Clinton, citing Chelsea’s privacy, declined to disclose whether she has received an engagement ring or any other details about wedding plans. It will be an interfaith marriage; Mezvinsky is Jewish, while Clinton grew up attending Methodist Church with her mother. Bill Clinton is Southern Baptist.

Word of the engagement was first reported by ABC News.