Poetry and Tradition

As the ceremony ended, guests strolled outside - on a bone-chilling, drizzly afternoon with a temperature of 34 degrees - to two white tents, kept warm with space heaters. Amid pots of white chrysanthemums and hydrangeas and twinkling white lights, they danced and dined on tournedos of beef and a seven-foot-high white jimmy choo shoes wedding cake filled with white chocolate Bavarian cream.

The cake was a gift from the Culinary Institute of America, a school in Dutchess County that trains chefs. The main meal was prepared, at an undisclosed cost to the Governor, by Daka, the concession that runs the cafeterias at the adjoining Empire State Plaza, which includes state offices and a convention center.

'A Very Special Place'

Although over the years friends and associates of governors have been married at the Executive Mansion, today's ceremony was the first in memory at the mansion involving a member of a governor's immediate family. That the  jimmy choo wedding was held there was a reminder of how the Cuomos, more than any previous first family of New York, have made the mansion their full-time residence.

''We researched and investigated all kinds of possibilities,'' Miss Cuomo, who was escorted down the aisle by the Governor, said in an interview before the choo shoes wedding. ''But this is a very special place. My family has been living here for five years, and to be married on the same spot where my father was inaugurated, well, that's a nice memory to be able to have.''

Miss Cuomo's gown, designed by Eve Muscio of Milady Bridal, was made of pale ivory silk satin with a sweetheart neck, bishop's sleeves and with Alencon lace and cultured pearls applique. Its nine-foot train was designed with Alencon lace and cultured pearls. The seven attendants to the bride, who included her two sisters, three new sisters-in-law and two friends, wore floor-length rose-beige silk moire gowns with jackets trimmed in beaded Alencon lace.