Chelsea and Marc: a fairy tale made for America

Chelsea Clinton is neither an actual princess nor a fairy tale version, having neither the blood of the first nor the looks for the second. But on Saturday, the 30-year-old daughter of the former POTUS with the world's most recognised name will walk down the aisle in a Fairy Tale Wedding staged for an American Princess which will leave every nuptial since that of Lady Diana to you-know-who looking a bit downscale and tawdry.

America loves a wedding, a princess and a fairy tale. It is really no surprise that the nation is transfixed by the prospect of Bill and Hillary's only child joining in multi-cultural Holy Matrimony with Marc Mezvinsky, 32, an investment banker whose rabbi will also attend.

Whatever the republican leanings which Americans like to boast on Independence Day, they have an unerring eye for the regal. They find it even harder to resist investing their presidents with royal status than their Hollywood stars, plenty of whom are expected to witness Chelsea's happy day.

Children of the White House have special status. The Kennedy kids playing innocently at their father's feet in the Oval Office had a lot to do with the creation of the Camelot myth, and just wait until Malia and Sasha Obama get ready to wed.

Even the less-than-hyperbolic New York Times has decreed the Clinton wedding the "social event of the year". The top-secret guest list of 400 would today make a far, far hotter Wikileaks revelation than all that old stuff from the Iraq and Afghan wars.

We hear that Obama has declined, that Gore has been snubbed, and that Oprah is a sure bet. Rumour has it that all guests must have at least some link to the happy couple beyond political donation, although that might be open to interpretation.

But there is something a little different about watching Chelsea getting married. There really is a measure of national goodwill towards the young woman so many remember as the gawky teenager with bad hair and braced teeth growing up in a White House of vulgar domestic crisis.

Who didn't wonder over the fate of a teenage girl caught in the glare of global speculation of exactly what her father had been up to with the cigar and the intern?

The picture that comes to the national mind as the hankies are readied is that of  Chelsea walking in the White House gardens with Bill and Hill minutes after Clinton had, at last, made his public confession of adultery. It is taken from the rear, and shows Chelsea between her parents, clutching the hand of each, literally holding her family together.

That the answer should be that Chelsea is apparently sane, balanced, smart, focused, heterosexual and monogamous is something of a redemption, a beacon of hope for all the children of a shamelessly narcissistic generation.

"Today, she is a chic strawberry-blonde," writes the Times, "with experience working in a hedge fund, deep interest in public policy, and, as of January, a master's degree from Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health."

A happy ending! No kidding: the paragraph above brilliantly encapsulates the aspirations of the American ruling class. For all the revolutions in gender and ethnic status, if you are a girl you still can't beat being a strawberry blonde: postgraduate degrees are the status symbols of horses to kings and camels to Bedouin; interest in public policy designates leadership status; and working in a hedge fund? Well that is proof of entry into Wall Street's inner-tabernacle.

Chelsea must have learned from her mother to keep her mouth shut and her eye on the prize. She has been so successfully discreet that we cannot pretend to know whether she also has the charisma and larger-than-life appetites of her father.

According to the norms, it does look as if she has found her man. They met on campus at Stanford, and seem to share those crucial common goals of career and money. They share birthrights of political scandal: both Mezvinsky's parents were members of Congress, his Dad ending up serving five years in jail for fraud. Mezvinsky's is a pillow where Chelsea can lay her head without inhibition.

But all this is for the chattering classes. The wedding devotees are simply here to enjoy the show, and the Clintons are stage-managing it to perfection.

Will Chelsea wear Vera Wang or Oscar de la Renta? Will she convert to Judaism for the comfort of grandmas eager to secure Jewish offspring? Is the wedding really to be in Rhinebeck, a chi-chi Hudson River Valley town just beyond the New York suburbs, popular with rich gays?

Just outside Rhinebeck is Astor Courts, a Versailles-romantic confection put up by the master of Gilded Age neo-classicism, Stanford White. This is perfect for aspirants to the Court of the Sun King. Tents are going up on the lawns: guards flex muscles at the gate; cops arrest trespassing paparazzi; every hotel room for miles around has been block-booked since May.

But is this a decoy for a deeper secret, somewhere on Martha's Vineyard? The Clintons keep us guessing. Yet every business in Rhinebeck has been engaged in some way or another – flowers, chocolates, dinner reservations – with a confidentiality clause written into their contracts. Smart.

Appropriately, Nancy Amy, the executive director of the local chamber of commerce, offers the clearest view of the Americans who infest the town with wedding fever.

"There are curiosity seekers," she says. "There are people who want to be part of history. And there are people who are genuinely happy that Chelsea is getting married and has found someone." ·