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Getting Invited to the White House for Dinner
- What are the odds of your being
invited to dinner at the White House?
- About the same as Tom Selleck
appearing at your Tupperware
- party in search of a melon keeper.
-
 Erma Bombeck
-
 When the President issues an invitation to a formal dinner at the White
House, it is a little different from a hostess inviting several couples in for a
formal dinner. The White House
expects precise punctuality. Everything
is perfectly timed. The husband and
wife arrive and the husband checks their coats at the cloak room where he is
handed a little envelope. It
contains a small drawing of the table, marked to show where they will sit.
It also contains the names of the partners each will have, because no man
escorts his own wife to dinner.
 Before the dinner there is a reception so that the President can meet
any guests he does not know and greet old friends. The husband and wife then make their way to the East Room
where the portrait of George Washington hangs that Dolley Madison rescued many
years ago. Here the guests and
their wives greet others of the party and aides present men to their female
partners, if they are not acquainted. The
guests are assembled in a line around the room according to rank and their
position at the table.
At precisely the correct
moment, the President enters the room with the First Lady, the President
leading. With them are the guest of
honor and his wife. They form a
small receiving line and the guests file by to pay their respects to their host
and hostesses and meet the honored guests.
A military aid stands with the President and another with the First Lady
to make any introductions that are necessary.
Even for people the President has met, it helps to have an aid present
because no President can possibly have at his fingertips the names of the
persons that he has met in a year or a lifetime. Many guests spend their moments with the President reminding
him of where they met him last.
When
the President has greeted everyone, the Marine Band strikes up a military march
and the President leads the way to the State Dining Room with the wife of the
guest of honor. The First Lady is
escorted by the guest of honor. Every
male guest takes the lady the White House has assigned him and has the duty of
escorting his dinner partner back to her husband or friends after the dinner is
over.
Download this file for more about Presidential Food History
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