President calls Jenna's wedding 'spectacular'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

May 12, 2008

Jenna Bush, daughter of President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush, exchanges wedding vows with Henry Hager in an outdoor ceremony at the Bush family's Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford, Texas. Rev. Kirbyjohn Caldwell, center, performs the ceremony. Jenna's twin sister Barbara, maid of honor, watches at left. (AP Photo / May 10, 2008)

WACO, Texas - President George W. Bush spent months joking about being a father of the bride, but yesterday he was downright wistful about giving his daughter Jenna away to her longtime beau.

"Our little girl, Jenna, married a really good guy, Henry Hager," Bush said, standing next to Laura Bush at an airport in Waco, where he boarded Air Force One for his flight back to Washington. "The wedding was spectacular ... it's all we could have hoped for."

A reporter asked the president if he had been up late partying. Bush winked, then turned toward the plane, ignoring a reporter's joking question about whether the wedding had given the U.S. economy a boost.

In recent days, the White House dribbled out little details of the wedding in a strategy to keep it from becoming a media circus.

A White House official confirmed by e-mail at 9:28 p.m. Saturday that Jenna and Hager, the son of Virginia's Republican Party chairman, had been hitched.

At the post-wedding party, more than 200 family and friends were entertained by the Tyrone Smith Revue, a 10-piece band from Nashville, Tenn., who gave the newlyweds what Smith called a "get down" party.

The bride and groom were raised Republican, but this was a bipartisan ceremony. Officiating was the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a longtime spiritual adviser to the president who has endorsed Barack Obama.