LITTLE ROCK — One weekend afternoon in April, Dan Bleen, the manager of Le Petit Bistro, an upscale French restaurant in Rhinebeck, N.Y., a quaint Hudson Valley town, received a mysterious telephone call from the owner of Astor Courts, the centerpiece of a nearby 50-acre estate. The caller wanted to make a reservation, she told him, “for some very special guests,” whose identities she would reveal moments before they arrived.
The guests, it turned out, included Chelsea Clinton, the publicity-shy daughter of the former president and current secretary of state. Clinton and three girlfriends sat at a secluded table, chatting animatedly and sampling appetizers, salads, entrees and a dessert, accompanied by a nice Beaune Burgundy.
It seemed unremarkable at the time. But now, the dinner has become yet another morsel of evidence in a New York-to-Washington web of intrigue over the social event of the season: the impending marriage of Clinton, 30, to Marc Mezvinsky, 32, an investment banker at 3G Capital Management and a son of two former Democratic members of Congress, one of whom served prison time for fraud.
The wedding, set for Saturday, is so cloaked in secrecy that in Washington, where the mother of the bride holds down a day job running international diplomacy for President Barack Obama, details are harder to ferret out than the president’s Afghanistan strategy. Even guests do not know the locale; invitations came with instructions to be within driving distance of Manhattan, plus a promise that specifics would be sent a week beforethe big day.
That has not prevented some educated guessing. The current betting is that the Clinton-Mezvinsky nuptials will take place in Rhinebeck, at Astor Courts, a 13,000-foot beaux-arts pavilion built between 1902 and 1904 for John Jacob Astor IV and designed by Stanford White to evoke the Grand Trianon at Versailles. The Clintons have refused to confirm the reports; the mansion’s owner, Kathleen Hammer, a political donor to Hillary Rodham Clinton who made Chelsea’s restaurant reservation, did not return e-mail messages or calls.
Americans are eternally fascinated with presidential children, and perhaps none more so than Chelsea, who arrived at the White House as a gawky 12-year-old with frizzy hair and braces, and grew up before the nation’s eyes, under a cone of silence that she has broken only rarely, to campaign for her mother, for instance, when Clinton’s bid for the presidency was in jeopardy. Today, she is a chic strawberry-blonde, with experience working at a hedge fund, a deep interest in public policy and, as of January, a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York.
Yet for Americans of a certain age, the enduring image of Chelsea Clinton is that of the 18-year-old college girl walking on the White House lawn, her back to the camera, holding onehand of each parent - literally the glue binding her family together after her father’s painful confession of marital infidelities. Even then, she seemed to exude a combination of dignity and distance.
In Mezvinsky, she has found a partner whose life experiences bear a striking resemblance to her own. The two first met as teenagers in Hilton Head, S.C., during a Renaissance Weekend, the annual intellectual and spiritual fest popularized by the Clintons. Both attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., though their romance did not bloom until a few years ago. And both know firsthand the price of political loss and scandal. (One difference: Chelsea is an only child, but Marc is one of 11, some adopted.)
Mezvinsky’s mother, former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania, is a one-time television journalist who was elected in 1992 onPresident Bill Clinton’s coattails. She lost her seat two years later after voting for the president’s budget. (Today she teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where her spring 2010 course offerings included “Dealing With the Media.”) She is divorced from the bridegroom’s father, former Rep. Ed Mezvinsky of Iowa, who was released in 2008 after serving a five-year prison term and is now living in western New York, his lawyer said, and working as a health advocate for low-income people and refugees.
Within the tight-knit circle of New York wedding coordinators, some tidbits are beginning to leak. The weddingplanner is Bryan Rafanelli of Boston, who has worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton and produced inaugural balls for Obama. Jeff Leatham, artistic director of the Four Seasons George V hotel in Paris, who has a studio in New York, is handling the flowers. Jimmy Vali, whose website boasts that his clients include Glenn Close, is coordinating the music. None would confirm their involvement. “I’m not at liberty to say very much,” Vali said.
For other details, like the dress designer (reportedly Oscar de la Renta, but maybe Vera Wang), inquiring minds must wait. Unlike another first daughter, Jenna Bush, who previewed her summer 2008 wedding at her parents’ Crawford, Texas, ranch with a splashy spread in Vogue, Clinton is not planning prenuptial media coverage. And, this being New York, the topic generating more speculation than any other is not the dress or the flowers, but religion: Mezvinsky is Jewish, raising questions about whether a rabbi will participate (likely) and whether Clinton, like her mother a practicing Methodist, will convert (unlikely).
The Clintons are extraordinarily close to their only child - as president, Bill Clinton once put off an overseas trip so he could be home to help Chelsea study for exams - and lately have been letting their enthusiasm show.
“I am going to try not to cry,” Bill Clinton allowed during a trip to South Africa last month. That was after he confessed to CBS that his daughter has instructed him to lose 15 pounds before walking herdown the aisle. “She doesn’t think I’m in shape,” he said.
His wife, meanwhile, recently sent an internal e-mail message to State Department employees referring to herself as an “MOTB” - wedding planner lingo for mother of the bride. On a recent trip to Poland, she told an interviewer that she has been squeezing in “tastings and dress selections,” and viewing flower arrangements via e-mail.
Never mind peace in the Middle East. “It truly is the most important thing in my life right now,” Clinton said.
As to the guest list, one can only imagine the headaches. About 400 are expected to attend (although the Obamas aren’t). That’s large for an ordinary wedding, but small for a family whose reach includes presidents, movie stars andkings, not to mention all those political donors looking for a payback. There is one criterion for making the cut: Guests must have a personal connection to the bride and bridegroom.
In Rhinebeck, where pictures of the former President and Secretary Clinton hang in many of the downtown shops, preparations do seem to be under way for something big. The Beekman Arms Inn is sold out for the weekend of the wedding. The stately Belvedere Mansion in nearby Staatsburg is also sold out. Jill O’Brien, its vice president for events and sales, said someone - she would not say who - reserved all 31 rooms this spring and paid for them on the spot. And Astor Courts, which had been up for sale since fall 2009, was taken off the market July 8.
High Profile, Pages 47 on 07/25/2010