Mr. Cox Takes a June Bride

ALL afternoon the skies above the White House Rose Garden were a dull pewter gray. The 400 guests arrived at the East Gate, had their credentials checked so that crashers could be spotted, and walked quickly through intermittent drizzle to shelter under the South Portico. It was not an auspicious beginning. Many guests thought that Tricia Nixon should move her wedding indoors to the East Room.

In a fairly impressive display of her stubborn cool, Tricia decided that her wedding to Edward Finch Cox would go just as she had planned it. Attendants with white towels mopped the rain water from the gazebo just outside the Oval Office and peeled the protective plastic sheeting from the white carpet spread down the aisle between the gilt guest chairs arranged in the Rose Garden. At 4:30 p.m., after a half-hour delay, the rain stopped, and perhaps the loveliest of all the 16 weddings held at the White House began.

If the Nixon Administration has acquired a reputation for somewhat gray formality, it appeared for this day to have taken on something like opalescence. The President was more relaxed and charming than he had ever seemed. When George Shultz, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, sympathized with the President over the rainy afternoon, Nixon summoned up a mellow, almost Irish line: "No, no. A soft rain caresses the marriage." Pat Nixon, in a bright dress decorated with appliqued orange, pink and yellow flowers, was vivid and proud.

New Image. On her father's arm, Tricia followed her attendants--including Matron of Honor Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Ed Cox's sister Mary Ann, the maid of honor--down the steps from the Blue Room balcony and into the garden, where the President gave his daughter away before the small wrought-iron gazebo painted white. Her gown, by Priscilla of Boston, was an elegant white silk organdy. The all-lace bodice was molded to show her tiny waist and scalloped at the wide V neckline. Altogether, the gown was striking and sophisticated, a departure from the little-girl fashions for which Tricia has sometimes been criticized.

The Rev. Dr. Edward Gardiner Latch, a Methodist and long a pastor of the Nixon family, led the couple through a ten-minute ceremony that Tricia had prepared with Ed's approval. "To love," he began, "is to appreciate and cherish our beloved as a unique person, deep, extraordinary, exceptional. It is to visualize him or her as an equal yet complementing individual." As Eddie placed the diamond wedding band on Tricia's finger, she promised to "honor and comfort"--the "obey" was omitted. Eddie kissed his bride gently on the cheek. The rain started again just as the ceremony ended.

No Congressmen. The guests retreated rapidly to the embowered state rooms of the White House for New York and California champagnes and dancing to the music of Bill Harrington and his orchestra. The relatively small assembly consisted of the oldest of the Cox and Nixon family friends, along with the members of the Cabinet and the White House staff. No Congressmen were invited, despite the years that Richard Nixon served there. Instead, there was the Rev. Billy Graham, Comedian Red Skelton, Mr. and Mrs. Art Linkletter and Eversharp Inc.'s chairman of the board, Patrick Frawley Jr. Mamie Eisenhower presided like a kind of surrogate grandmother. Martha Mitchell came extravagantly dressed in a vaguely antebellum orange and white ruffled, ankle-length gown and carrying a bright yellow parasol. She brought it into the Rose Garden, leading Melvin Laird to grump: "I thought everybody checked their umbrellas inside."

Kiss for Hoover. Three other White House brides attended. Luci Johnson Nugent came with her husband Pat, who confessed that he wept when Eddie and Tricia walked down the aisle (he wept at his own wedding too). Luci at one point startled FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover by planting a resounding kiss on his cheek. Lynda Johnson Robb and her husband Chuck were in deep conversation with Ralph Nader. The sentimentality of the day was relieved by gleefully acerbic Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 87, a White House bride in 1906. Asked by TIME'S Bonnie Angelo if the wedding brought back memories, she replied: "No, it doesn't bring back one goddamned memory. I was married before the days of Hollywood. This is quite a production." The President danced with Tricia to Thank Heaven for Little Girls. Later he danced with Julie Eisenhower and with Pat, who in a rare moment of public affection kissed him warmly on the cheek. He also danced with Lynda Robb until her husband cut in. When Eddie's father, Howard Cox, drew Mamie Eisenhower onto the floor for a dance, a cheer erupted from the crowd, as it had for the President's first step. Then Mr. and Mrs. Ed Cox, still dressed in their full wedding costumes, left in a limousine from the North Portico for their honeymoon. The band played Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye.

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