Jill Biden Said Naomi Hasn’t Asked About A White House Wedding Yet

Since Naomi Biden announced her engagement earlier this month, inquiring minds have wondered if she might get married at the White House. After all, she’s President Joe Biden’s oldest grandchild — and her fiancé, Peter Neal, also seems to spend a lot of time with the first family in Washington D.C. According to Dr. Jill Biden, though, she hasn’t requested to get married at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave just yet. “We haven’t been asked yet,” Dr. Biden told The New York Times in a Sept. 19 interview.

Naomi broke the news of her engagement on Sept. 5 in a sweet and simple Instagram post. In the pic, captioned, “Forever,” she’s smiling and leaning close to Neal while showing off her ring. She’s kept quiet about her wedding plans so far, but there’s a good chance the President will play some kind of role: Biden is famously close with his grandchildren. In an August 2020 interview with PBS NewsHour, Naomi shared she talks to him every day.

“He'll pick up our calls no matter where he is,” Naomi said. “He'll be on stage, giving a speech, and we'd call him and he'd be like, ‘What's wrong?’”

It also wouldn’t be unprecedented for a member of the first family to say “I do” at the White House. Naomi and Neal would be the nineteenth couple to wed there, and the first since White House photographer Pete Souza’s 2013 nuptials. Before that, Bill Clinton’s brother-in-law got married in the Rose Garden in 1994, and before that, presidential relatives including Richard Nixon’s daughter, Lyndon Johnson’s daughter, and Franklin Roosevelt’s advisor chose the venue for their ceremonies.

That said, many presidents’ children and grandchildren opt out of formal White House weddings. When Jenna Bush Hager got married in 2008, she decided to hold a smaller, private ceremony at her family’s ranch in Texas. “I was raised in Texas, and it just felt right,” she told Vogue in 2008. “It means a lot to me and Henry [Hager] to be outdoors. We wanted something organic and low-key.”

Naomi and Neal first went Instagram official in 2018, and since then, he’s been by her side at events including Biden’s 2020 inauguration. According to his Instagram, Neal interned at the White House during Barack Obama’s presidency, and later worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Naomi, meanwhile, recently graduated from Columbia Law School, and in April 2020, she joined forces with her now-fiancé to create an online tool to help Americans determine their CARES Act relief eligibility.

It wouldn’t be off-brand for these two to marry at such a historic venue — hey, maybe the President will even officiate the ceremony — but it might be too soon to tell just yet.