People: Jul. 28, 1986

• Share

To many Americans, it was the near equivalent of the royal wedding that Britain is preparing for, albeit with a slight reversal of roles. At Westminster Abbey this Wednesday, with suitable pomp and ceremony, Prince Andrew of the House of Windsor weds his commoner (but uncommon) love, Sarah Ferguson. But near Hyannis Port, Mass., last Saturday, the bride was the Princess of Camelot when Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, 28, daughter of President John F. Kennedy and former First Lady Jacqueline Onassis, was married to the very un-Kennedyesque Edwin Arthur Schlossberg, 13 years her senior.

In recent years, as the "Kennedy cousin" generation has come to maturity, Hyannis Port and the rambling family compound have been the sites of exuberant weddings. Unlike the Maria Shriver-Arnold Schwarzenegger nuptials last April, this wedding was about as private as a Kennedy ceremony can probably be. For all the paparazzi attention that has been focused on her, Caroline, a law student at Columbia University, is actually reserved; unlike the Kennedy men, who tend to define themselves by action, Schlossberg, whom she met at a dinner party five years ago, is an intellectual and artist whose somewhat rarefied career defies precise terminology. Frequently described as a "Renaissance man," he is a designer of museum displays and interiors and the author of nine books, including a computer handbook and a limited edition of poetry written on Plexiglas, aluminum and black cloth.

Most striking of all, for this Catholic family whose scion broke the religion bar in presidential politics, Schlossberg is Jewish. The son of a Manhattan textile manufacturer, he is liked by the bride's family not for his ability to garner votes or toss a football but because he is comfortable sitting in the background and learning what others have to say.

The wedding and the preparations leading up to it, however, were as traditional as the bridegroom was atypical. So starved was the press for news that reporters zeroed in on arriving Cousin and Bridesmaid Sydney Lawford McKelvy in the Barnstable airport ladies' room and besieged her with questions as she changed her son's diaper. The mother of the bride was characteristically silent, but she did wave cheerily to onlookers when she arrived from her estate on Martha's Vineyard.