Obama, accompanied by his wife, Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia, strolled to the wedding from their own home just a few houses away from the festivities on Chicago’s South Side, where Laura Jarrett married fellow Harvard Law School grad Tony Balkissoon. Laura’s mother, Valerie Jarrett, is a one-time lawyer and close political advisor and friend of the Obamas.
The wedding’s guest list read like a veritable who’s who in politics: attending alongside the Obamas was Attorney General Eric Holder, big bucks Obama fundraiser and Ariel Investments chief executive John Rogers, and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan, a former adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
Obama, dressed in a beige suit, the First Lady, wearing a dress with a beautiful gray-sparkled bodice and flowing, pleated cream-colored skirt, and Sasha and Malia, styled in green and yellow dresses respectively, navigated a tightly-secured perimeter in their old neighborhood, which saw guests and cars swept by Secret Service officials charged with protecting the First Family.