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Christ Church. All the Roosevelts marry young, some marry well, a few marry spectacularly. Father Franklin was not yet out of law school when he took to wife his fifth cousin once removed in the presence of President Theodore Roosevelt on St. Patrick's Day 1905. Franklin Jr. will do himself just as well, if not a bit better. Already a press bureau has been set up in Wilmington's Du Pont Hotel to handle the story of the wedding party. Philadelphia's social arbiter, Mrs. Edward J. MacMullan, had secretaries sending out invitations—plus a train schedule and road map—weeks ago and the accounting of the whole affair has been efficiently organized on a Du Pont big business scale. The happy couple, well-photographed ever since the engagement, has submitted to an orgy of lens-snapping and bulb-flashing (see p. 25). At Owls Nest last fortnight they amiably tennised, golfed, drove, posed in romantic silhouets for the rotogravure sections. It was said that Wilmington had paved some of its streets for the occasion and short of skywriting, nothing has been left undone to make the occasion the most popular and publicized "White House Marriage" since Alice Roosevelt married Nicholas Longworth.
Of the 300 guests invited to the wedding, those who will have the best view of the ceremony will be the Du Pont servants, who have been allocated a choir stall. Thomas Elliott, the coachman who was busy carting and uncrating wedding presents last week, and his colleagues will see the Roosevelt family seated in the first row on the left hand side of the middle aisle. Near them will be Postmaster General & Mrs. James Aloysius Farley leading a delegation of Washington officials. Du Ponts and other as yet unnamed socialites will be scattered throughout the flowerdecked church. Two ministers will preside at the altar: Rev. Frederick Ashton, Du Pont pastor in whose present house Ethel was born, and Dr. Endicott Peabody, headmaster of Groton School, traditional assistant at "Grottie" weddings and indispensable attendant at Roosevelt solemnities. Belgian Organist Dr. Charles M. Courboin will play the processional from Wagner's Lohengrin and Ethel du Pont, on the arm of her father, will walk to the altar over a white satin carpet. She will be attended by her sister Aimee, her future husband's sister Anna and five other friends and schoolmates.* Franklin's ushers include his cousin Frederick A. Delano 2nd, his brothers Elliott & James, his brother-in-law John Boettiger and Eugene 3rd and Nicholas Ridgley du Pont, Ethel's brothers. John Roosevelt will be best man. The music will stop and Dr. Ashton, assisted by Dr. Peabody, will perform the ceremony.