With more than eight hundred guests, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and John F. Kennedy got married in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
Jackie met John Kennedy, the senator from Massachusetts at that time, through her first job as the Washington Times-Herald’s Inquiring Camera Girl, at a dinner party in Georgetown. They dated for two years; then, in June 1953, they got engaged, and Kennedy gave Jackie a 2.88-carat diamond-and-emerald ring from Van Cleef and Arpels.
In September of the same year, Jack, as Kennedy was called, and Jackie got married.
Jackie’s ivory silk gown made by Ann Lowe, an African-American designer, is still considered one of the most iconic in American history. The dress took a lot of work, but it wasn’t actually Jackie’s choice; she wanted something completely different and simpler, but her father-in-law, Joe Kennedy, had the final say about the dress.
Lowe and her assistants spent around two months working on the wedding dress and bridesmaids’ dresses, but nearly all of their work was destroyed when a waterline burst in the workshop only 10 days before the wedding. Lowe had to pay for new fabric and hire extra staff to recreate the dresses, and she kept the incident a secret from the Kennedy families.
Despite her efforts to save the wedding from disaster, Lowe received minimal acknowledgment for her work until thirteen years later, when Lowe was featured in a profile by Ebony magazine.
The Archbishop of Boston, a family friend of the Kennedy clan, officiated the ceremony, assisted by four other priests.
Seven years later, the couple became the youngest president and first lady in American history.
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