Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403270048
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DALLAS LENGTH: Medium
President and best man Bill Clinton gave his half-brother a reassuring squeeze of the hand when Roger reached out for a little encouragement as his bride marched up the aisle in a flower-filled tent at the Dallas arboretum.
Taking deep breaths and bouncing on his toes, Roger clearly was nervous, but also appeared to be playing to the crowd of about 400 by exercising his flair for the dramatic during the 20-minute ceremony.
Minister John Miles, who traveled from Arkansas for the occasion, drew a chuckle from the crowd when he announced, "Roger didn't ask for a sermon, but he's getting one anyway. If he'd come to church more regularly, I wouldn't do one."
Miles drew more knowing laughs when he declared that "marrying Roger, there will be bad days." But then, in an equal-time warning, he added, "Marrying Molly, there will be bad days."
When the bride turned sideways for the exchange of vows, several members of the audience could be heard remarking at the advanced stage of her pregnancy.
A 30-minute cloudburst, complete with thunder and lightning, struck just as the wedding guests moved from the ceremony to the reception in the same tent.
"We had already decided to get married," Roger told a local radio interviewer. "The baby sort of sped things up." The couple has been living together in Redondo Beach, Calif., for nearly a year.
In another prenuptial interview, Roger said the couple decided to go slow because "we've never gone through this marriage thing."
"We're trying to sort of, like trial and error, do the right thing at the right time," he told TV's syndicated American Journal.
Unfazed by all the attention that comes with a wedding in the president's family, the groom wore blue jeans to Friday night's rehearsal dinner at a friend's home in north Dallas. About 40 guests - including Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton - munched on fajitas and guacamole and kept an eye on the TV as the Arkansas Razorbacks survived another round of NCAA tournament action.
Best Man Bill Clinton sent his younger brother into marriage with "not too much advice" and "lots of love and well-wishing," Roger reported as Friday night's party broke up.
Martin, 25, plans to use the name Molly Martin Clinton. She works at a software company in Marina del Rey, Calif.
Reflecting the couple's musical tastes, the Cindy Horstman Jazz Harp Trio was to play before and after the ceremony, and the groom's longtime friend Bill Tillman - whose band played for the couple's first date - was performing at the reception.
If there was a bittersweet element Saturday, it was the absence of Virginia Kelley, the Clintons' mother, who held her boys together through adversity. She died of cancer in January.
by CNB