Bush Clan Forgets Its Troubles As Jenna Prepares for Big Day on the Family Ranch

It is being billed as a "low-key" event, which is perhaps odd for a wedding with 200 guests, 14 quasi-bridesmaids, a bride's dress made by a top New York designer and a limestone altar carved for the occasion in the shape of a giant cross. But then this is Texas, where nothing is done in half-measures.

Today, a little after sundown to allow for the dissipation of the oppressive mid-day heat, George Bush's daughter Jenna will become the 23rd child of a serving president to be married. But unlike the splendor, say, of Alice Lee Roosevelt's 1906 nuptials in the White House that were attended by foreign heads of state and swept the groundbreaking deal of the Panama Canal off the front pages, this will be a thoroughly private affair.

When President Nixon's daughter Tricia became the last incumbent's child to marry at the White House in 1971 there were 600 reporters present. Today, by contrast, there will be no cameras allowed inside the 1,600-acre (650-hectare) Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Maybe that's fitting for a woman who begged her father not to run for the presidency in 2000 on the grounds it would change her life.

Jenna will say "I do", standing beside her groom, Henry Hager, in front of the outdoor crowd of family and friends gathered around a lake and in front of the great limestone cross - her father's contribution to the day which will now form a permanent feature on the ranch.

Hager adds to the tone of an internal family affair, hailing from the Bush political inner circle. His father is head of the Republican party in Virginia and used to be in the tobacco trade; Henry himself was political adviser to the man credited above all others with orchestrating the Bush revolution: Karl Rove.

In the little pre-wedding publicity there has been, Jenna has been insistent that the day is very Texan - and not very DC. "Henry and I are far less glamorous than the White House," she told Vogue this month. "I was raised in Texas, and it just felt right."

The lack of official razzmatazz is not holding back the 750 residents of Crawford in their pre-nuptial excitement. Though very few have been invited to the bash, no one is showing anything other than delirious contentment that the party is being held locally.

That may have something to do with the fact that while nationally President Bush's approval rating has fallen to a historic low of 28%, in solid-Republican Crawford it must be close to 99% (the remaining 1% being the gaggle of anti-war campaigners camped outside the ranch).

Or it might be because anything to do with the Bushes is good business for the town's few gift shops, two petrol stations, bank and single restaurant.

Over at the Red Bull gift shop yesterday, Jo Staton was doing a roaring trade in wedding coffee mugs which carry a picture of Jenna and Henry amid sprigs of spring flowers. She had already had to reorder the line two or three times, she said, and the wedding fridge magnets had already run out. That's before you get to the key chains, buttons and commemorative purses.

"The whole town's rapped up in this thing," she said. "We don't get to see much of Jenna these days, particularly since 9/11, but the family is real popular."

For the record, Jenna will be married in a sheer organza dress designed by her mother's favorite, Oscar de la Renta. It will be, we are told, "simple and elegant". The 14 quasi-bridesmaids, known by Texan lore as attendants at the "house party", will be kitted out by a local designer Lela Rose who, inspired it might be thought by her own name, has chosen the theme of native Texas wildflowers as her inspiration.

Jenna's twin, Barbara, will be the only bridesmaid proper, with her own unique dress colored to match her eyes.

Not so very long ago Jenna Bush was playing the sort of role now reserved, admittedly in spades, for Britney Spears. From being arrested for under-aged drinking, to sticking her tongue out from a presidential limousine to delighted photographers, she used to be the living embodiment of Hell for the White House press team. Her every action seemed to be more problematic than the last.

Now the transformation of her public image follows precisely the changing fortunes enjoyed by her father over the past seven years. Only in reverse.